EDITORIAL: A bid to eliminate 'food deserts'

In a suburb dotted with farm stands and supermarkets selling lots of fresh produce, "food desert" isn't a phrase that pops up often in conversation. Still, too many Long Island communities, like North Bellport, don't have easily accessible fresh food.

They tend to be poorer communities, where many residents don't have cars and have to use sparse mass transit to shop. So, if they've never had a supermarket nearby - or if they had one and it closed - they have a tough time getting healthy food. The result: unhealthy reliance on obesity-inducing fast food.

But now there's a ray of hope to get new markets into these areas. The state's economic development arm, Empire State Development, with help from the not-for-profit Sustainable Long Island, are offering a possible solution: the New York Healthy Food & Healthy Communities Fund. It's $30 million - $10 million from the state and $20 million from Goldman Sachs - for loans and grants to supermarkets and developers, to help defray the costs of opening markets in these communities.

The idea, modeled on a successful approach in Pennsylvania, is hardly the total answer. After all, $30 million isn't much, spread across the whole state. So the hopes are modest. It might only produce two or three projects on Long Island. But that's two or three food deserts that would finally get an oasis of healthy food. And that's an experiment worth trying. hN