Deserts within the Cityscape: How Food Deserts are Affecting Urban Communities

Deserts within the Cityscape: How Food Deserts are Affecting Urban Communities

By: Jacob Quintana, Jaclyn Samson

 

Food security is a problem affecting many Americans. Food deserts are a result of low income residents living more than a mile away from a grocery store, with limited transportation access, according to the US Department of Agriculture (Conahan et al). These families thus have limited access to healthy food options. People are forced to either take a large amount of time out of their own day to go to the grocery store and buy healthy food, make less frequent trips in comparison to those that do live near grocery stores, and/or choose fast food options over home cooked healthy meals. Access to healthy food is important for the welfare of these communities. Poor diets can result in health conditions, especially for children, which includes asthma, birth defects, aggression, anxiety and oral health problems and mental health problems, diabetes and hypertension for adults (Conahan et al).

Uneven development is a large cause for how these food deserts are created. However Howerton with the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia states that “Socio-economic inequalities intersect with racialized landscapes, and this suggests that food deserts are both culturally and economically produced” (Howerton, 2017, pg. 740). Food deserts are the manifestation of scarcity and “capitalist practices that require inequality for the production of surplus” (Howerton, 2017, pg. 742). In these cases, food is seen as a commodity that can be overcharged because there is no other competition in that neighborhood. The uneven development is caused by the abandonment of capital. No capital creates less of an incentive for city governments to invest in these areas, leaving neighborhoods that are more developed to continue to grow and neighborhoods that are disenfranchised to continue to have poor access.

 

It would seem like the easiest solution to solving the issue of food deserts would be to build more grocery stores in the places that need them. However, that is often not the case since most grocery store companies choose new locations based on profit potential. The places in need of grocery stores the most are often overlooked as new store locations in favor of places with higher income. Some solutions to this issue would be for people within a community in need to build their own smaller family owned grocery stores. This would eliminate the decisions made by corporations on what products will be sold and where the businesses are located. It would also bring communities closer together since they would be serving to their own needs.

 

Community built and maintained gardens are able to give people access to fresh foods in food deserts across the country. Having a garden within the community solves the problem of people not being able to reach fresh foods because of lack of transportation. Some things that prevent people from doing things like gardening for themselves is not having enough time or not knowing how to. If people who are too busy to garden themselves because of things like working long hours have access to community gardens, then they will have access to fresh food when they would have often only had fast food as an the only option before. Community members can educate each other on how to build and maintain these gardens. The people who have more time to spend gardening can help make sure that people who are too busy still get fresh produce. These solutions help bring communities together while providing access to food.

 

Sources

Conahan et al. “Birchwood, Alderwood Neighborhoods Labeled as a Food Desert” Whatcom Watch Online. Retrieved from: https://whatcomwatch.org/index.php/article/birchwood-alderwood-neighborhoods-labeled-as-a-food-desert/ (Links to an external site.)

Howerton, G., & Trauger, A. (2017). “Oh honey, don’t you know?” The Social Construction of Food Access in a Food Desert. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 740-760. Retrieved from https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1524