The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Reinvestment Fund announced the latest expansion of America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), a nationwide program created to provide local solutions to increase food access in communities.

Reinvestment Fund is inviting applications for grant awards through the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) Planning Grant Program, a new program that will provide grants to eligible organizations to support healthy food retail or food retail supply chain projects that are in early-stage planning and predevelopment phases.

Multi-Million Dollar Grants Will Support 16 Food Financing Programs Serving Rural, Urban, Tribal Communities Nationwide

The 2014 Flint Water Crisis, compounded by the closure of two major grocery stores by 2015, left North Flint residents exposed to dangerous levels of lead and without access to affordable, fresh food.

When the small “farmers market” style store that served the Oxford, Mississippi community for over 30 years closed in 2016, the neighborhood was left with limited access to fresh foods. Chicory Market, a full-service community grocery store, took over the space in 2017.

Erica Williams founded A Red Circle, a North St. Louis County, Missouri-based nonprofit, in 2017. A Red Circle promotes community betterment in North County through a racial equity lens. In 2022, the organization was awarded a Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) grant to support the development of its first grocery store project—a community-owned grocery store named People’s Harvest, which will include access to affordable groceries, cold storage space for Black farmers, a community learning space, and more.

Buche Foods has served South Dakota for over 100 years, and along the way, the grocery chain has been committed to finding ways to better serve its customers and help the local community get fresh, healthy food.  

Across the country, the shameful reality of limited access to healthy food plagues historically marginalized communities. It is an issue that is rooted in discriminatory policies and disinvestment, and is reflected in the 27.6 million people living in places with inequitable and inadequate access to healthy food, according to our research on supermarket access disparities in the contiguous United States. In cities like Atlanta, supermarket development has notoriously followed patterns of redlining, a discriminatory lending practice beginning in the 1930s, as retailers concentrated development in wealthy, white communities while avoiding low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

Velma Wilson has always loved a good challenge and has devoted the past seven years of her professional career to creating opportunity for Quitman County and its residents.