Disrupting the Food Accessibility Problem with Dawn Parks

Disruption Interruption podcast host and veteran communications disruptor KJ Helms interviews Dawn Parks, who explains how to solve the food accessibility problem that is affecting our nation and the world. And her solution is as simple as it is logical.

(Tampa Bay, Florida) May 23, 2022—According the USDA, there are 38 million people in the United States who go hungry every day. The worst part of this number is 12 million of them are children.(1) In 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment and food insecurity, an estimated 60 million Americans turned to food banks and community programs for help putting food on their tables.(1) To make these numbers even more dire, 22 million children are supported by the National School Lunch Program and rely on free or reduced-price meals. However, when school is out so is their food.(2) Access to food—but not from a monetary perspective—is also part of the problem because many Americans either do not live near a grocery store or because the small, Mom and Pop corner market has been displaced by big box stores, by crime or online shopping. What can be done?

Enter Dawn Parks, CEO and Owner of The Alternate Edge Consulting. Dawn sat down with Karla Jo Helms, host of the Disruption/Interruption podcast, to explain how Dawn’s company works with architects, engineers, farmers and city planners to create buildings that can come alive and become a source of food for people living in the area.

“I imagine that wanting to grow plants and crops indoors must get complicated when you take regulations and building restrictions into consideration. Plus, trying to get all stakeholders to agree must be a nightmare,” Karla Jo points out.

A point to which Dawn not only agrees but emphasizes that this is precisely what her company does: engaging all players to ensure that food sustainability becomes a reality.

Dawn Parks elaborates:

The main ingredient for disruption is thinking outside the box and looking for technologies that could fit together especially if they haven’t been thought of before. How’s the disruption happening now? Understanding the core problem, the local community and their needs and working towards what’s needed to help overcome these “food deserts.”

The Status Quo of food sustainability remains its geographic location. Although not the rule, but low-income areas have a history of high crime and lower buying power. Therefore, grocers might not be willing to take the risk and move in. As a result, nearly 19 million Americans do not live near a grocery store.

Climate changes are also a part of the current problem as it affects vegetation, impacts the crops and the livestock.

Another factor to consider is getting the food to the consumer’s location in the U.S. whether it is because there aren’t enough drivers, the location is too remote, or the infrastructure simply is not supportive.

Imagine now all the space in a building that could be devoted to plant and crop growing, thus giving people access to fruits, vegetables and herbs which they couldn’t get before.

Technology, along with data, can help make better decisions for everyone to be more productive and profitable.

The government truly is limited in the funding they can provide to this type of project. It is up to private enterprises to pick up the ball and carry it to the goal.

“The grocery stores aren’t moving in and those that do move in are taking a bigger risk. Because there aren’t a lot of retailers, maybe a higher crime rate, or it is a depressed socio-economic area, if you have $40 and need to feed 5 people, it’s easier to go to McDonald’s than to go buy broccoli and lettuce,” says Dawn.

Disruption Interruption is the podcast where you’ll hear from today’s biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about change and how they overcome opposition to adoption.

Disruption Interruption can be listened to via the Podbean app and is available on Apple's App Store and Google Play.

About Disruption Interruption:

Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries— MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping and logistics, and more—and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, “THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD IT!”? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo “KJ” Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews bad a**es who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traits—and not-so-common—that are changing our economic markets… and lives. Visit the world’s key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at www.disruptioninterruption.com.

About Karla Jo Helms: 

Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR(TM) Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors(TM).  

Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line—and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill into the good graces of public opinion—Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

About Dawn Parks:

Dawn Parks, a graduate of Purdue University, is the CEO and owner of The Alternate Edge Consulting, based out of Cincinnati, Ohio, works hard to bring food sustainability to the millions of Americans who live in “food deserts” because they don’t live near a grocery store. Dawn works to ease the struggle between architects, engineers, and city planners to develop indoor farms that meet strict building codes, are architecturally attractive, and can grow the foods that people want to eat. Growing thousands of plants indoors with these building restrictions quickly complicates the project. Dawn sees herself as the conductor when it comes to these big projects. She can “see” how, when, and where, the players need to bring their specialized knowledge to create the building that grows the food desired by the audience (in this case, the people that live in that particular area). See https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnparks/

Sources:

Landing Page; “Hunger in America”; ©2022 | Accessed 19 May 2022; Feeding America; feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america#:

Lentz, Cheyenne and Lakritz, Talia; “Millions f kids go hungry in the US every summer without school lunches. These striking facts reveal the scale of the problem”; 10 June 2020; The Insider; businessinsider.com/free-school-lunch-kids-summer-hunger-2019-5#:

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