| CHOW BELLA | t Café Oasis on Wheels Farm Express is cruising into Phoenix’s food deserts. BY ROBRT L. PELA K aren Ann Saluga is learning to cook with zucchini. “You can just put it in ev- erything,” she explains. “You can make it by itself, with a lit- tle oil and an onion, or you can chop it up into other things, you know? And you could make it into a sweet bread if you want to, so it’s like a dessert.” Saluga didn’t know much about zuc- chini before she discovered the mobile produce market Farm Express and began, as she likes to say, “eating right, day and night.” She doesn’t drive, and after her husband died in 2008, Saluga began rely- ing on the local convenience stores in her neighborhood. They didn’t offer a lot of healthy food. “It’s too far to the Safeway, and my neighbors don’t want me bother- ing them. So I ate what I could get.” Saluga and others like her are the target market of Farm Ex- press, a pair of mobile produce markets that provide high-quality, affordable fruits and vegetables to residents with little or no access to healthy food. Mobile produce markets are a mainstay of movements address- ing the “food desert” — any urban area, according to public health officials, where it’s difficult to buy af- fordable, good-quality fresh food. U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture maps show that metro Phoenix food deserts are numerous, and mostly found in urbanized parts of south Phoenix, on the westside, and near down- town’s urban core. Tempe has them, too. “Everyone agrees that access to clean air and water are fundamental rights,” says Elyse Guidas, executive director of Acti- vate Food Arizona, the seven-year-old non- profit that operates Farm Express. “But access to food is privatized, somehow. Farm Express Placing access to good food at the forefront moves our communities closer to good health.” Farm Express is founded on the idea that nutritious food keeps people healthy but isn’t always available to every commu- nity, Guidas says. The nonprofit serves people — particularly seniors, veterans, and the disabled — in Phoenix and Tempe. Its produce is sold at cost and is tax-free; nearly all of it grown locally or regionally and sourced from Peddler’s Son Produce, a family-owned, Phoenix-based distributor, and from Sun Produce Cooperative, which distributes organic produce grown by small-scale local farmers. Guidas’s team sells fruits and vegetables >> p 35 out of retired and renovated city 32 JUNE 24TH – JUNE 30TH, 2021 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
