On Tuesday, Sept. 10, the John Locke Foundation hosted a dinner and presentation in partnership with grocers and farmers, representing the grand finale of the launch of the John Locke Foundation’s “Sowing Resilience” project. The film took an in-depth look at food insecurity in North Carolina, consisting of a four-part docuseries and a research report.
The event featured innovative strategies and grassroots solutions from organizations such as Grocery Connect and Bonton Farms. Both non-profits partnered to bring a presentation highlighting their efforts to bring food to communities in need and decrease food insecurity. These organizations’ innovations and grassroots strategies highlight what could be accomplished if a regulatory sandbox, removing onerous state regulations to allow for market innovation, is applied to the agriculture sector.
The highlight of the evening was a panel discussion with Samuel Newman, Executive Director of Grocery Connect, and Daron Babcock, founder of Bonton Farms and now Director of Community Transformation for the Stand Together Foundation. Anna Scott, Director of Operations for ‘Radius,’ facilitated the discussion. ‘Radius’ is a project of the Stand Together Foundation. Bonton Farms and Grocery Connect are based in South Dallas, TX.
The mission of Bonton Farms, in the words of their founder, is “to create the conditions of flourishing in places where they don’t exist.”
Babcock said this extends far beyond mere access to healthy and affordable food.
“It’s a complex mix of things,” said Babcock. “Our whole reason for doing this is to see people live into their full potential, and in areas of concentrated poverty, that’s not happening.”
Seven things hold people back, he said. In areas of concentrated poverty, you will find deficits in at least five of those seven areas: education, transportation, housing, economy, fair credit, community, and health and wellness.
Babcock told the Carolina Journal in a sit-down interview. “If we are not well or healthy, we cannot live to our full potential.”
Food deserts are often plagued by dearths in several of these seven areas, in contrast with well-provisioned affluent areas. “You will never find a food desert in a socioeconomically stable place; if there is money, there will be a store there,” said Babcock.
“Grocery shopping should not be hard, but for so many people, it is,” said Samuel Newman, Executive Director of Grocery Connect. “We have a new problem with food access, and old systems aren’t going to solve that problem. That’s what got me fired up about this program called Grocery Connect.”
Bonton Farms partners with Grocery Connect to help individuals who have trouble getting to a grocery store to access food. Grocery Connect partners with Kroger to deliver fresh produce and essentials to central community hubs. Local concierges assist with orders, SNAP benefits, and quality assurance, improving access and building trust in underserved areas.
“This is a new solution,” said Newman concerning Grocery Connect. “We will work with the private sector, community-based organizations, and philanthropy to bring groceries into a developed district. If bringing groceries to your door is a dead end, let’s step back and ask how to get closer. We will go in and work with community-based organizations already serving the neighborhood, embed ourselves, and add value to that organization.”
During panel discussion, Babcock talked about how he was introduced to food deserts. He spoke about how he and his partners deliberately experienced taking the bus to the grocery store so they could better understand what it was like for those without transportation. The limitations are practical; individuals who take public transportation can only purchase what they can carry and often risk being mugged.
Babcock explained that when he started 13 years ago, under 8% of the US population lived in a food desert. Today, it has more than doubled to over 17%.
“We’re not solving the problem,” said Babcock. “We are creating non-profit charitable ways to mitigate the problem. If we want to see food security go up, we have to have scalable market-based solutions that address the root of the problem, which is access to food. We live in the richest country in the history of the world. We import 40% more food into our cities than we use, so we have a 40% waste factor, and we haven’t solved this problem, and that’s unacceptable. So, I’m searching now, we can find an answer.”
The leaders at Grocery Connect are tackling the problem head-on.
“It is our job at Grocery Connect to bring in other partners,” said Newman. “I don’t want Grocery Connect to be a grocery store. Kroger’s is really super good at selling groceries; let’s leverage that expertise. Our job at this point is to listen and operate with integrity. If day in and day out you can deliver on what you are promising, you build trust. We are not the solution; we are working on a solution. It has got to be driven from checking some assumptions, leaning into what we know, avoiding what we think we know, and hearing from those we’re serving.”
Babcock pointed out that while innovative solutions like Grocery Connect are a significant step towards solving food insecurity, they should inspire more outfits to join the solution.
“When the right mix of people get together, innovation happens,” said Babcock. “Businesses innovate to survive every day, so we need them at the table. [Grocery Connect is] the best next step and could end food deserts in the next ten years, but if it is the final step, we have fallen short — we need something to spark what is possible so that it starts getting copied, innovated, and improved on.”
Stakeholders have said they would love to recreate the success of Grocery Connect in North Carolina, leveraging the power of the free market to lessen the burden of food insecurity.
“Agriculture is the largest industry in our state, and several large retail grocers call North Carolina home,” Jessica Thompson, General Counsel and Director of Govt., Affairs for the John Locke Foundation, told the Carolina Journal. “Yet many of our neighbors still live in food deserts and have trouble accessing affordable, healthy foods. That’s why Locke was thrilled to host Grocery Connect and share a free-market solution to combatting food deserts with policymakers and social entrepreneurs, hoping to inspire a similar partnership in the Tar Heel state.”