A bill addressing food insecurity in urban and rural food deserts is signed by Gov. John Carney.
The legislation creates the Delaware Grocery Initiative - a healthy foods effort providing financial assistance to eligible food resources, local governmental food resources or specialty grocers.
"After a certain amount of time programs run out of funding and resources. And so through this legislation, we're able to add funding and resources to support the Delaware Food and Farm Policy Council, but also many of our multi-ethnic grocers who are doing their business work each and every day that have never had access to capital or the support of state government. Now they have access to do those things," said Sen. Darius Brown who sponsored the bill.
Brown adds this is important because it addresses food insecurity and food deserts.
Food deserts are residential areas lacking adequate access to affordable nutritious foods – typically lower-income areas where there is no access to a grocery store in at least half a mile in urban areas or at least 10 miles in rural areas.
"It's really going to create the opportunity for a grant program to put money into grocers and food resources all across the state. They're going to make food accessible to average Delawareans, and so that's just incredibly important in addition to food access strategy is going to allow us to continue to look at where we need to do better work,” said Chad Robinson, Vice President of External Affairs with the Food Bank of Delaware. “And make sure that we can do that work in the years ahead."
The Division of Small Business will administer the grants to eligible food resources, local governmental food resources or specialty grocers.
Robinson notes there are over 120,000 Delawareans struggling with food insecurity. That translates to one in eight Delawareans and one in five children.
