Food Deserts

Today, let's have a brief chat about food deserts. Despite what the name may indicate, food deserts are not necessarily correlated with climate related deserts. Instead, food deserts are areas where accessing affordable and healthy food is incredibly challenging, or perhaps even impossible (learn more here, here, and here).

Food deserts have a disproportionate impact on those who are already low income. A multitude of factors contribute to this; grocery stores are concentrated in wealthier areas, public transport in America is not reliable or extensive, and even if you have a personal vehicle, gas is expensive. Furthermore, food deserts are more likely to impact Black people, Asian people, Latinx people, and Indigenous people - in essence, any marginalized racial group. This results from historical and present racial discrimination in America, that in combination with poverty can result in poor people of color being most impacted by food deserts.

Even with all of this information, you still might be wondering what a food desert could look like. Here are some examples to consider. A food desert could take the form of a suburban neighborhood where the majority of housing is low income/subsidized, that is over a mile from the nearest grocery store. People may choose to live there because the housing is affordable, but getting food then becomes a challenge. A food desert could be a city neighborhood with lots of corner stores and convenience stores, but the nearest real grocery store is over 30 minutes away by public transport. A food desert could be a rural town where the nearest population center is hours away. In sum, food deserts can look like a lot of things, and we often may not realize what and where they are if we are not impacted by them.

So, given all this information, what’s next? Food deserts are a systemic issue, and thus must be tackled as such. Antiracism and poverty alleviation efforts are of course, important, as is mutual aid. Other considerations are participating in local government; if your town has zoning laws that might be contributing to food deserts, or is continually proposing to put grocery stores in the same areas and ignoring others, consider making your voice heard. Ultimately, food deserts have no easy solution, but there are things you can do.