Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Logansport Senator Wants To Eliminate Food Deserts

Corey Templeton
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/coreytempleton/

Some Indiana Senate lawmakers are hoping for a study committee that will focus on a program to reduce food deserts.

First, they must convince legislative leaders to direct a committee to examine a potential program to make fresh food more accessible.

Republican Senator Randy Head, R-Logansport, authored a bill last session to reduce food deserts, or areas where fresh food accounts for less than 10 percent of accessible and available food.

His grant program would incentivize new or existing businesses to provide fresh food to those areas – encouraging more grocery stores to open, for instance.  

But the idea encountered resistance, mostly, says Head, from Republicans who think it’s a new welfare program, something they oppose. 

Yet, Head argues it’s the opposite.

“We’re trying to give families ways to save more of their own money, to budget responsibly, to learn from that to make better choices going forward so that they can get off welfare and stay off welfare,” he says.

Head says he thinks more time, and a summer study committee, can help convince his colleagues the program will work. 

The legislative council, made up of the House and Senate Republican and Democratic leaders, meets this week to announce the study committee agenda, and whether Head’s program will be part of it.

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.
Related Content