Creating community gardens in food deserts to improve access to good health (interview with rob horton of trap garden)
Rob Horton (@rob.veggies) is the founder and Executive Director of Trap Garden (@trapgarden), a nonprofit and social enterprise that provides a sustainable source of healthy, high-quality foods for food insecure communities.
Through creating community gardens within food deserts, leading educational health programs, and engaging underserved communities in healthy, active lifestyles, Rob has been able to help fight the systemic injustices currently preventing low-income communities from affording or accessing good health.
In this podcast episode, Rob discusses his inspirations to start Trap Garden; his successes and challenges in starting community gardens in different food deserts; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Rob and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
“Providing access to a diverse group of foods, or at least opening it up to the community to be able to try something new, is really so pivotal for us.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological balance, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes.
On the barriers of accessing fresh and healthy foods:
“If you're not making an income that allows for you to not only be able to purchase healthy food items, but also be able to take care of your rent and provide clothing for yourself and your children, then you start to think about what's going to be most important in your life.
Is it more important for me to go to this fast food restaurant and get something that can feed my family of four to five, so I can go to work [longer] and continue to make more money for my family? Or should I take more time to go farther away, where they provide something that's healthier, and take a longer amount of time to prepare that meal?
[And you have to also consider that] the freshness of [whole foods] might not last as long on top of all of these other issues that you have to face, supplying the needs of yourself and your family.
On the flip side: A lot of the revenue that grocery stores are generating, they're only getting pennies on the dollar for what they're selling. So when [grocery stores] are looking at certain communities and they don't believe they're going to generate enough revenue off of this product, they may or may not offer it to the community.
So you're being siloed to only be allowed to have a certain amount of different options to choose from. And that's why providing access to a diverse group of foods, or at least opening it up to the community to be able to try something new, is so pivotal for us to succeed in getting people interested in eating a little healthier and adding new foods to their diets.”
On engaging children in healthier eating habits at a young age:
"If you can convince a child to pick up an apple instead of a bag of chips, then the parent will be more than likely to purchase that for their child.
So we developed a program called ‘Eat.Grow.Live.,’ in which we went to elementary schools and provided educational support and fun activities to get students engaged in the process of trying healthy snack items and learning about how those snack items were created from seed or farm to table.
On top of that, we get them more engaged in the process by saying, ‘What would your marketing plan be to get your friends to be interested in these same items?’
These are third and fourth grade students coming from lower-income housing areas in Nashville, who're now interested in trying something new, sharing the experience with their friends, and then going shopping with their parents telling them, ‘I just had this in class and I would love to have it again.’”
On Trap Garden's community-based approach:
“We think it's very important to continue to bring community members to the table to help solve the issues we're facing when it comes to food or trying to bring something new to a community.
In every garden, we worked with community members. We didn't come to the community saying, ‘We have the answers and this is what you need to do to have a better outcome.’
Instead, we allowed them to have a seat at the table and collectively worked as a team, saying, ‘Let's try something new and see how it works.’
We don't immediately come into a community and say, ‘you have to do it this way.’ But instead, we ask, ‘How can we work together to build something that's better than what we have right now?’”
Final words of wisdom:
"Take it one step at a time."
