food access starts on the farm obviously if those products go into the local communities
you have a chance to maybe attract more business and industry into that area there are far too many
places in the state of virginia where it's easier for a person to get a twinkie versus a banana or
an apple it's tough to swallow our vision for the future of the food system is that all virginians
will have equal access to fresh local nutritious food that small family farms are vibrant and able
to make a living and that small businesses in the food sector will be able to start and thrive in
this economy the reality is that there are social factors that play into it folks who live in
low-income neighborhoods or have low socioeconomic status are more likely to be obese they're more
likely to have diabetes they're less likely to have access to healthy food and facilities with
wish to exercise people are recognizing the benefits of sourcing food locally and so demand
really has skyrocketed the remaining challenge is to make access more equitable rural urban across
all income levels we recently had the state of obesity report come out
if our two and four year olds are already obese what they're looking forward to is a lifetime of
diabetes not being able to participate in society in the workforce ending up on disability
and overall poor quality of life children deserve to eat good healthy food and if their
parents are working and are unable to get that food for them we're going to have a generation
that's unhealthy and that's just not fair here in southwest virginia with us being so so close to
kentucky west virginia tennessee north carolina you can be in any one of those states in less than
an hour it's at least 40 to 45 minutes in order to get to a main store that we knew of it's important
that we have stores here so that virginians can stay in virginia and do their shopping which then
is ultimately good not only for the commonwealth but also for the individual locality it's kind of a
double whammy loss for both the city and the state of virginian revenue the virginia grocery
investment fund can potentially have an enormous impact on weaving together the different parts
of the food system and really meeting the needs of the community where there are currently huge gaps
i think that capital is always going to be a concern if that hurdle is removed i think it gives
grocers a little more flexibility to be a little more nimble and be able to go some places that
maybe they might not otherwise be able to go that's our main problem is getting the food
into the area where we live so you don't have to do that long drive i think it also does have a
positive impact on the overall tax base because anytime that you are making the cash registers ring
that's additional money for whatever locality it happens to be situated in
agriculture is virginia's number one private sector industry about 52 billion dollars a year
in annual revenue over 300 000 jobs and agriculture impacts every single region of the state being
based here in this historic part of danville where we have commercial district combined with the local
neighborhood that's walking distance what's missing is this food market and once we're here it will
without a doubt be an anchor for the community over the years we've employed about 220 somethings
and many of those folks have gone on to start food businesses and they employ people putting their
money back into the communities so i view it as a win-win and i believe that's why we should look
again to creating the virginia grocery investment fund for virginia if other states like pennsylvania
to our north can figure out a way we should be able to figure out a way to do it here in virginia as
well that would be wonderful for them to be able to give an incentive for business to grow
and to help your food the way i'm eating will affect my niece she will eat what i eat if i eat
healthy it's going to cause her to eat healthy
