For many of us, the gateway drug toward a lifetime of experimentation with world-saving endeavors was food. With so many points of personal relevance — from health concerns to the pleasures of taste to the simple fact of its frequent necessity — food can be an opportunity to see the immediate positive effects of changed behavior.

In many ways, advocates of sustainable food can already boast many achievements: Mainstream grocery stores and big box supermarkets sell organic foods and many of them are sourced from local producers; television networks and celebrity chefs frequently reinforce the idea that farmer’s markets are a great place to shop and fresh foods taste best; and many home gardeners are selecting edible rather than decorative plants.

That said, we still face many challenges in our efforts to create a more sustainable food system and promote good health. One of the most significant obstacles is access. If you laid a city map showing low-income neighborhoods over one illustrating the distribution of grocery stores and markets offering fresh produce and unprocessed foods, the intersections would be disappointingly few.

These areas are often dubbed “food deserts” — swathes of nutrient scarcity in an otherwise abundant cityscape. It is often difficult for members of those communities to travel to different parts of town in order to shop at markets with fresher foods — it requires spare time and sufficient means of transport. Where fruits and vegetables can be found in the food desert, they are often tagged with an unnecessarily high price due to the complexity of distribution networks, meaning that people instead make the cheaper, less healthy choice, consuming foods that are largely to blame for a rise in obesity-related health problems. By extension, of course, the costly medical bills that accompany these afflictions only further contribute to economic hardship.

To break this cycle,a growing movement for food justice is underway. All over the US, individuals and organizations are working to improve access and affordability through projects that bring farm fresh food into urban neighborhoods, teach people about making healthy choices, and establish community gardens where people can grow their own vegetables and fruits. This area is something of an unsung hotbed of innovation, teeming with upstart non-profits and small businesses that offer creative solutions to entrenched problems.

In Oakland, just across the bay from my own home, organizations like People’s Grocery and City Slickers Farms are setting examples for community engagement and hands-on education. People’s Grocery runs what could be described as a 21st century reinterpretation of the old Good Humor truck — an organic market on wheels that drives through Oakland neighborhoods drawing people’s attention with hip-hop music and a brightly painted exterior. Residents can board the truck and do their shopping without having to travel outside of the neighborhood. People’s Grocery’s success has also allowed them to do a number of new programs including significant outreach and education initiatives.

Not far away, City Slickers Farms, brings members of the community together on its small spreads of urban acreage where organic vegetables are cultivated and harvested for the surrounding neighborhood. City Slickers makes a priority of engaging “historical” residents of the area — traditionally African Americans — and of encouraging the participation of newer populations of color — primarily Asians and Latinos. The organization now operates five different community farms in West Oakland, run by hundreds of local volunteers who help distribute over 5,000 pounds of fresh produce to their neighbors each year.

Efforts like these radiate a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm in the areas where they’re active, and they represent great hope for improving the distribution of good food in American cities. Other projects like People’s Grocery and City Slickers Farms are popping up all over the nation. Unfortunately, a divide remains between the food justice movement and culinary food movements that are more evident in specialty food stores and high-end farmer’s markets. It’s easy to forget when shopping at Whole Foods that the profound and important transformation fostered by this type of enterprise hasn’t reached the farthest corners of the food distribution system. Whole populations remain out of reach of what amounts to a basic human right: food that promotes good health and comes to us without injustice to people or the planet. Through more work bridging this divide and supporting food justice programs, we can make strides toward getting healthy, sustainable, fair food into the mouths of those who need it most.

For more on food justice check out The Center for Food & Justice, Growing Home, Just Food, and Added Value.