Most of us can easily go to our local supermarket and find just about any fresh and healthful food that there is. But in this country today there are still places where people don’t have easy access to fresh healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables. However, there is a lot of work going on to change that work that will also help the farmers who grow those foods. The latest developments coming this past week in an announcement from Deputy Agriculture Secretary Xochitl Torres Small who told reporters…

“USDA Rural Development and the reinvestment fund are announcing the selection of 16 partnerships that will receive more than $40 million in grants under the Healthy Food Financing Initiative Partnerships Program to expand access to nutritious and affordable foods in 20 states and in Washington DC.”

Grants will be used by local organizations to do such things as establishing new local markets and local supply chains and helping local food retailers to offer more fresh produce for their customers. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says this is just part of a huge effort to give consumers more access to healthful foods, and to give local farmers more access to nearby markets an effort that includes…

“Establishing regional food business centers investing over $300 million dollars in local agricultural marketing initiatives, establishing resources in partnership with states, nearly $700 million invested in states under our regional food system infrastructure effort. We’ve had local food purchasing agreements where we’re creating the opportunity for local opportunities for schools for food banks. To basically sell to a small and midsize producer in the region in the locality as opposed to a large scale distributors. We’re creating Farm to School commitments across the board. And finally, we’ve essentially invested billions of dollars in our procurement efforts as we try to deal with the issue of dealing with food insecurity, encouraging those resources that are going into food banks to come from as much as they can from local regional food producers.”

“People who live in some of the most remote parts of the country don’t have to travel so far from home to find fresh healthy food.”

And farmers don’t have to ship their products hundreds of miles justifying buyers for those crops.