While fresh food is difficult to find in communities of color, healthier, environmentally-friendly organic food is near impossible to track down, according to a new study by the Chicago Reporter. The story's authors surveyed 209 grocery stores spread across nine of the city’s 77 community areas and found some startling statistics:

- Ten percent of stores in black communities carry organics, compared to 24 percent in Latino communities and 63 percent in white areas.

- The population of the white neighborhoods was less than one-third of the total population of the communities examined, but were home to nearly two-thirds of the stores that carried organics.

And from the annals of irony, the Midwest’s largest distributor of organic food, Goodness Greeness, is located in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood that itself doesn't contain a single organic purveyor.

Although grocers and distributors have been slow to expand, citizens are beginning to fill the gaps. Aside from the rise of a small but burgeoning urban agriculture community, more than one-third of Chicago’s 27 black community areas have a farmers market that sells some organics.

(H/T Gapers Block)

Image of the Oak Park farmer's market used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Kymberly Janisch.