Solving the Food Desert Problem: An Assessment of Interventions

• In Event: 095 - Section on Community and Urban Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 19. Food Deserts and Urban Cultivation

Abstract

Research on the negative effects of living in areas without easy access to affordable fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole foods has increased dramatically in the past fifteen years. Although definitions vary, these “food deserts” are most often conceptualized as urban areas without a grocery store within a one mile radius (or ten miles for rural areas) where residents have high rates of poverty and insufficient access to transportation. Food deserts have become the focus public policy debates on the basis that this type of food environment increases the likelihood of poor health outcomes like obesity. In this article, I survey the most common interventions designed to improve the food environment in these geographic areas in order to subsequently improve public health. In particular, I focus on one increasingly popular solution to the food desert problem: the mobile farmers’ market. Based off of a pilot study of shoppers at a mobile farmers’ market located in two food deserts in Greenville, SC, I show that nearly 80% arrived by car and nearly a third purchased goods as means to engage in “ethical consumption” (Hilton 2003). These findings call into question some of the utilitarian assumptions built into why proposed food desert solutions should work. In the conclusion, I survey other unexpected outcomes of food desert interventions today and analyze how and why proposed solutions may not be achieving their desired outcomes.

Author

• Kenneth H. Kolb, Furman University