Food Deserts

A food desert is an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food. Despite visuals that the term ‘desert’ may conjure for you of cacti and sand-swept dunes, food deserts are not exclusive to any particular geographical landscape or area. Food deserts exist all over – in bustling cities, in rural communities, and everywhere in between.

In fact, the misleading nature of the term ‘desert’ is one of the criticisms directed at the term. A desert is a natural ecosystem, while food deserts are the result of intentional policies, corporate decisions, and other economic practices. To associate food deserts with a naturally occurring landscape ignores the complicity of people and institutions in creating them; the definition of food deserts on its own doesn’t do much to account for the structural injustice that maintains lack of access in food deserts. 

Another problem is the inadequate way in which food deserts are measured, and the perspectives and experiences that they do not take into consideration. Food deserts are a phenomenon that have been studied and used as a basis for laws without considering the lived experiences of people existing in food desert communities. 

Below is a compilation of articles from leading food journalists exploring the complexities of food deserts. 

“Critics say it’s time to stop using the term ‘food deserts’” by Lela Nargi

What has the term food desert done for our understanding of food access, security, and the role of systemic barriers in our food systems? How does it fall short?

A recurring critique posed in this article is that the methodologies for designating food deserts are insufficient and outdated. Instating effective policies to serve people living in food deserts requires understanding their lived experiences – experiences that cannot “be adequately defined just by tallying supermarkets within neighborhood boundaries.”  Such an approach falls short because it ignores the “resilience and creativity of community members in finding exactly what they want to eat,” and does not account for alternative ways of accessing food such as farm stands, farmers markets, CSAs, and more.

How can we improve these methodologies? One solution offered up in this piece is participatory mapping. Learn more here. 

“The Hidden Resilience of ‘Food Desert’ Neighborhoods” by Barry Yeoman

This piece follows Ashanté Reese, an assistant professor of anthropology at Spelman College who is studying the changing food landscape of Deanwood, a historically black neighborhood in D.C. Reese critiques food deserts and the one-dimensional solutions that are often prioritized in addressing them. 

Learn more about the history of the term food desert, the productive ways it has reframed the conversation around food and health disparities, as well as the ways the term remains inadequate and misleading in this piece. 

“How some big grocery chains help ensure that food deserts stay barren” by Lela Nargi

This piece explores tactics grocery chains use to stifle competition, at the expense of the communities they operate within. One such tactic is writing restrictive covenants into deeds and lease agreements. These covenants can prevent retailers from opening a grocery store in a leased space or from building a food outlet on a purchased piece of land. Through such agreements, grocery chains deny communities the option to choose where they want to shop for food. By buying up and holding onto large plots of land, chains also prevent the general development of the community beyond food outlets. 

While many critics argue that such covenants violate U.S. antitrust law, no serious federal action has been taken in that regard. Learn more here. 

“As Dollar Stores Proliferate, Some Communities Push Back” by Wesley Brown

“Dollar store parent companies say they’re feeding people in ‘food deserts,’ but critics say they’re making food inequity worse.”

In 2016, Kansas City became the first community to restrict the expansion of dollar stores, and now similar bans and moratoriums exist in 25 different municipalities across the U.S. Along with the bans many cities are including provisions and incentives for fostering better alternatives to dollar stores, particularly regarding access to fresh produce and meats. 

Dollar stores tend to stock very few fresh foods, if any at all, and serve populations that are already more vulnerable to health disparities because of systemic inequalities. DeKalb County, Georgia and Cleveland, Ohio both found that the majority of their communities’ dollar stores existed in low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods. 

“Women with families who earn under $40,000 per year dominate the dollar store model. They purchase only what they can afford to buy now, in smaller packages that often cost more per unit than they would at big box retailer.” – Dr. Sriya Shrestha, professor at California State University Monterey Bay

Learn more here.