Food: Bridging The Organic Divide

THE URBAN FARMER

All LaDonna Redmond wanted was a healthy diet. When her son was born six years ago with severe food allergies, she sought out pesticide-free produce and additive-free meat. But in Austin, her working-class, African-American neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, she discovered that "you could buy $200 sneakers, semiautomatic weapons and heroin, but you couldn't get an organic tomato." Austin's 117,000 residents are served by only one major supermarket, along with scores of small outlets that sell mostly fast food and processed food--fueling high rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension in the community. Redmond, 41, found herself driving to...

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