Food

Thanks to industrialization, food is much cheaper and more accessible than it was a half-century ago. Today, the average American household spends about 13 percent of its budget on food, down from 33 percent in the early 1960s.

But fresh vegetables, fruit, milk and whole grains remain pricey, and in recent years — as healthy, gourmet eating has attained new social significance — the costs of almost all food categories have risen, sometimes sharply. Meat has become unaffordable for many families.

Food is a serious budgetary challenge for lower-income families, a reality exacerbated by cuts to government nutrition assistance. And poor communities too often become “food deserts” bereft of supermarkets and greengrocers.

Fernanda Vega and Olivier Clerc's Household

Household: Fernanda Vega, 42; her partner, Olivier Clerc, 30; Vega's niece, Ana Daniela, 17; and Vega's daughter, Andrea, 12
Location: San Diego, San Diego County

The farmers market in City Heights defies stereotypes. Established by the nonprofit International Rescue Committee to support new immigrants, the market is an island of green in a lower-income, mixed-race neighborhood of San Diego lacking a large grocery store. The stalls are filled with affordable, fresh produce and staffed by Latino and African growers plying their earthy trade on new soil.

Olivier Clerc, 30, a translator and farmhand, was volunteering at the Bikes del Pueblo booth — among the market’s service-minded non-food “vendors” — on a recent Saturday, fine-tuning a passerby’s bulky mountain bike. On his break, he made the rounds to check off his grocery list: Swiss chard, kale, oranges and avocados. He bought the chard from a Ugandan immigrant who kept her stock of greens replenished from a community garden down the street.

In his native France, Clerc grew up around open-air markets and small-scale agriculture. “Where I come from, there’s your big market. You would go at 6 in the morning to get the best veggies and fruits. My parents had a big garden, and my grandfather was a farmer, so I had easy access to good food and fresh veggies.” Seeking adventure in his 20s, he bicycled from Canada to Mexico, where he met Fernanda Vega, a Mexican-American activist and graphic designer. He subsequently followed her north, to her adopted home of San Diego.

They now live in a City Heights home with Vega’s sixth-grade daughter and 11th-grade niece. But their “household” also includes three other women involved in food and environmental activism. They live communally — they call their space “the Coven” — as a way to save money on groceries and other expenses.

As explained by resident Kristin “KK” Kvernland, members of a collective are more than just roommates. “This is how we buy food,” she said. “This is how we do the chores. These are some rules we’ve created for the house.” The housemates, mostly low-income nonprofit workers (plus two dogs and a cat), split the monthly rent of $1,800 as well as utilities and toiletries.

They pool resources and make decisions as a group, especially when it comes to food. Every month, they each put $40 toward communal groceries such as chickpeas, garlic, olive oil, brown rice, semolina flour, pasta and coffee. “If you see on the master list ‘lentils’ and you don’t see lentils [in the pantry], you go buy that and then keep the receipt in the assigned place. Or one of us will make a big list and try to go and get them,” Vega said. Grocery store receipts stuck to the refrigerator are annotated to indicate communal purchases.

Aside from their Saturday purchases at the neighborhood farmers market, the housemates rarely buy fruit or vegetables. They pluck greens and carrots from their front yard and from tiered garden boxes behind the house, alongside a compost heap, rain-collection barrels, spare bike parts and a compost toilet. Clerc brings home eggs and potatoes from his part-time job on a farm outside the city, and Kvernland contributes milk — she owns a “share” in a nanny goat — and root vegetables from the urban garden she manages, a job-training site for formerly incarcerated youth.

By living humbly and in a collective setting, Clerc and Vega’s household-within-a-household has withstood economic change. Vega was laid off from her nonprofit job several years ago and no longer receives unemployment: Their annual income went from $40,000 per year to less than $20,000. She is looking for work and recently began selling coffee and pastries at the farmers market. But “it’s OK,” Clerc said. “We don’t spend that much money.”