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Are "food deserts" real? Never in my life in rural Alabama have I seen one.

• runako 3y ago
  You're possibly in a food desert and unaware. If any of your neighbors live more than a mile or two from a grocery store (not a convenience store), you are in a food desert. The definition involves being able to get to a grocery store on foot or public transit.
  • Retric 3y ago
    It’s a BS definition but not quite that BS: “one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas” The initial idea was urban areas are often mostly served by small convenience stores with high markups and few choices. However, being able to walk or use public transport can both work it’s really more a question of effort not distance.
    • bombcar 3y ago
      One mile is pretty darn low, even for suburban. I’m technically not in a food desert because there is a grocery store a block away. But if it were to explode, I’d suddenly be in a desert because the next grocery store (Walmart) is 1.2 miles away at the end of a nice bike path. I don’t even know if a grocery store’s customers can fit within a one mile radius circle without urban density.
      • runako 3y ago
        Deciding that a mile is low is a top-down analysis. But if you've ever walked a mile to a store to buy groceries, you'll quickly conclude that much further is not really a viable foot journey to buy groceries.
        • dahfizz 3y ago
          But nobody is walking in a suburban town. This definition makes basically all suburbs a food dessert, even though the grocery store is only a few minutes from most people's house.
          • runako 3y ago
            > nobody is walking in a suburban town I guess YMMV on this one. When I drive through suburbs, there are always people walking there. Watch especially how the staff arrives at your suburban stores & restaurants.
            • dahfizz 3y ago
              Okay, to be more pedantic - the vast vast majority of people living in suburbs have access to a car and do not consider a 2 mile drive to the grocery store an inconvenience. To say these people live in a food dessert is silly. You are very clever to point out that people can actually walk around in a suburb, doesn't change the point.
              • runako 3y ago
                > the vast vast majority of people living in suburbs This conversation is by definition about people living on the margins. Similarly, the "vast vast majority" of people do not qualify for SNAP. Pointing out that most people don't live on the margins is clever, but not particularly relevant, in a discussion about people who live at the very edge of society.
                • Retric 3y ago
                  Food deserts are more about human health than people living on the margins. Easy access to healthy food doesn’t guarantee people will eat it, but it dramatically increases the odds. If the closest and most convenient place to buy food is a grocery store then it’s a moot point.
      • Retric 3y ago
        Walking 1.2 miles down a bike path is also easier than 0.8 miles through urban areas without sidewalks. It seems clear the default was chosen to use round numbers, be easy to calculate, and make the issue seem more important. Stricter criteria mean fewer people fall into the category, but it also means those people have more significance challenges.
      • ghaff 3y ago
        I’m urban by census definitions though I certainly don’t look it. I’m also not really rural in spite of living on several acres in a town with a few thousand people. Certainly I couldn’t walk or take transit to a grocery store at all reasonably. But I’d laugh if you told me I lived in a food desert. I also couldn’t reasonably live where I am at all without a car or regular assistance.
        • bombcar 3y ago
          There is some fast and loose with "urban" and "rural" - most people consider New York to be Urban, Los Angeles to be Urban, and anywhere outside of the suburbs to be rural - but the census counts anything as urban that is "populated": To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... Many people would consider small towns "rural" but if the town is small enough, it can be an entirely "walkable" "urban" area - because there's a walmart, a gas station, and a hospital, all in a town that is less than a mile across.
          • ghaff 3y ago
            Yeah. My town has a population of 7,000 and is within an hour of Boston. I also have a Christmas tree farm on one side and an apple orchard and horse farm on the other. 75 acres in all and probably over 100 acres when you add some conservation land. Not what most people consider urban. But we don’t have a meaningful commercial area at all in the town. And I’m not walking anywhere except recreationally in the woods.
        • tzs 3y ago
          Nearly everybody is getting the definition of "food desert" wrong. It varies somewhat depending on who is defining it but for non-rural areas it is generally along the lines of a low income area with no sources of affordable healthy food within walking distance or reasonably affordable public transit distance and most people don't have other good transportation options. Places where nearly everyone has a working car and can generally afford gas, whether rural or not, generally won't be food deserts unless stores selling affordable healthy food are all pretty far away.
    • dahfizz 3y ago
      The problem is the definition of "urban or suburban". The census classifies any town of 5000 (!!!) people or more as urban. I live in a small town of more than 5000 people, so it's technically urban. It takes me 5 minutes to get to the grocery store, but it's technically more than a mile so I am in a food dressert even though I have easy access to fresh produce.
  • _chu1 3y ago
    I'm 2 miles to the nearest convenience store and 5 miles from the grocery store I choose to go to and I do not consider that to be a "food desert", it's just a drive down the road. It is quite easy to grow your own produce to eat, and kids want to do it now because it reminds them of Minecraft.
    • runako 3y ago
      Yeah, 2 miles is ~80 minutes round trip on foot for a healthy person. 5 miles is over 3 hours round trip on foot, carrying groceries back. This is not accessible. If a person is poor enough to qualify for food stamps, is it reasonable to expect them to have enough land and resources (fertilizer, etc.) to grow enough food for a family, while also earning a living? Should that be the only option? Finally, of the group of people who do not have reliable access to cars, the poor are a significant portion. "Just jump in your car and drive down the road" is not an option for millions of Americans. But yes, if you are relatively well-off, there's no such thing as a food desert. If you have a few tens of acres of land, a tractor, and car, even being 50 or 100 miles from a store is not a problem. SNAP isn't for those people.
      • _chu1 3y ago
        Sure, but nobody does that because you're clearly doing something wrong or have done something wrong if you live in a rural area with zero access to a car and nobody who could give you a ride. Counties with rural areas provide public transportation for these people. If you're literally on the brink of starvation, I don't think growing tomatoes is that hard.
        • runako 3y ago
          > Counties with rural areas provide public transportation for these people. Maybe in your state, but this is definitely not universal in America.
    • piva00 3y ago
      > it's just a drive down the road. It is quite easy to grow your own produce to eat, and kids want to do it now because it reminds them of Minecraft. That assumes: having a car, and having some arable land + time on hand to grow and care for crops. Those are big assumptions, you need money to have a car and land, poor people lack... Money.
  • Aurornis 3y ago
    That’s an unreasonably strict definition. Most people in the US and many other countries don’t walk to a grocery store even if it’s within a mile or two or accessible by public transit. They drive because it’s easier to haul groceries that way. Once you’re driving it’s not a big deal if the grocery store is within 1 mile or 5 miles. I don’t understand what the purpose of the “food desert” definition is if it’s so strict as to include huge numbers of people for whom it doesn’t matter. This feels like the kind of buzzword that an organization dreams up to make their work sound extra important while undermining the true problem by diluting it too broadly.
    • inetknght 3y ago
      > Most people in the US and many other countries don’t walk to a grocery store even if it’s within a mile or two or accessible by public transit. > They drive because it’s easier to haul groceries that way. > Once you’re driving it’s not a big deal if the grocery store is within 1 mile or 5 miles. Imagine you're between jobs, receive government aid for food, and can't afford to fuel your car. How will you get to the store? Imagine you don't have a car. How will you get to the store? Imagine you don't have friends or family. How will you get to the store? Your assumption of being able to drive is an unreasonably strict definition of a person.
      • friendzis 3y ago
        Hop on a bicycle or public transport? If you can't afford to fuel the car, more often than not you can't afford to own one either.
        • inetknght 3y ago
          > If you can't afford to fuel the car, more often than not you can't afford to own one either. Perhaps. Or perhaps you afforded the purchase of the car years ago. Your situation has changed since then and now you have a car that you can no longer afford to maintain.
      • _chu1 3y ago
        You are literally imagining the saddest person in the entire world that has every single difficulty imaginable preventing them from getting food. Are they a disabled veteran who's blind, can't speak and has autism too? None of those people exist here, not in singlewides, duplexes, apartments or living in their relatives basements. There are more people living in their car than people without cars where I live in Alabama close to places where get bored and live off the grid. Do you live in a rural area?
• phailhaus 3y ago
  Yes, almost 40M people live in food deserts in the US. [1] In rural areas, that means being >10mi away from the nearest supermarket or grocery store. For urban areas, the limit is 1 mile since many low-income residents don't have cars. [1] https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
  • postalrat 3y ago
    All low income residents do have working cars outside urban areas?
    • phailhaus 3y ago
      No, but most do. It's practically impossible to live in rural areas without access to a car.
      • postalrat 3y ago
        Practically impossible because they are "food deserts"?
        • phailhaus 3y ago
          No, because there is often no public transit and everything is miles apart. Most of the US is built for cars, not for walking.
        • Ancapistani 3y ago
          Not specifically, no. I was born and raised in a place where the nearest grocery store was ~30 miles away. The median annual household income in 2000 was <$30k. My senior class in high school consistent of 32 people. I literally visited the homes of classmates who had dirt floors and no running water. People who live in those areas have access to automobiles. Most of them have at least one operable vehicle per family; those that don't cooperate with friends, family, and neighbors to get what they need. To this day I regularly pick up hitchhikers when I'm driving through the area. I think the real argument here is that the term "food desert" seems much more extreme than the experience actually is. None of those people are going hungry because they can't get to the grocery store. The few that are going hungry, are going hungry because they're so strung out on drugs that they aren't capable of planning ahead even 24 hours. In other words, the lack of easy access to resources isn't the issue - it's the relatively large number of adults in poverty who are in that situation because of their own behavior. Whether they're capable of changing that behavior isn't the point here - they would be in a similar situation even if they were literally next door to a grocery store.
• _fat_santa 3y ago
  Oh yeah! I grew up in Atlanta and you could see it in quite a number of places around town, thought it's a very subtle thing. You'd be driving past an apartment complex in a poorer neighborhood. At first it doesn't look any different but look closer at the stores around that neighborhood. It's usually going to be a mix of gas stations, fast food joints, dollar stores and maybe a Kroger (forget Walmart or Publix, they only serve the nicer parts of town with a few exceptions). Other than the Kroger, there's really no other options for fresh food, and if you live >1 mile from the Kroger then it's going to be challenge to walk there. Often times a food desert seems hidden to someone in a car, you drive along and see some gas stations then down the road you see a Kroger or another grocery store. While to you in a car it's just "the store is down the street", to someone walking the store might as well not be there. And the problem with fixing food deserts is that fresh produce is much lower margin than other items in the store. A full sized grocery store can handle that and keep produce as a loss leader but a place like Dollar General simply cannot afford to keep produce on the shelf unless they price it higher in which case it becomes unaffordable for the people that need it most.
  • _chu1 3y ago
    Yeah, I do kinda agree. I've barely ever seen an actual grocery store in downtown Birmingham so I would understand it being hard to walk there, but the only guy I've ever met who doesn't own a car is some guy I play games with who lives out in rural Washington and he never really found it difficult to get food. I think another factor that I agree with is the lack of fresh produce especially in ghettos, in rural areas I think if it's difficult for you to get food you should really consider growing your own. Sure it's a bit of work, but you learn a lot and the Internet is a great source of information for gardening and recipes.
    • MiguelX413 3y ago
      It's more of a problem for people in poverty, who often can't afford cars.
  • underseacables 3y ago
    +1 for Atlanta. South of Five Points Station in Atlanta is practically one giant food desert, and it gets worse to further you go towards the airport. If you want to really see a stark difference between the rich and poor, take a bus from MARTA's Five Points Station through Virginia Highlands, then take another bus ride from Five Points to the airport. It's like two different cities, one with grocery stores, green lawns, and nice cars, and blown up buildings, trash, no grocery stores, and poverty.
• swader999 3y ago
  Seems like parts of America are devolving into this. A Wal-Mart or Target move in, crush competition, become the sole source in a radius. Then, they get overwhelmed by crime and close (or close for other reasons) and now the walkable or reasonable bus able distance to the next store is very far.
• smileysteve 3y ago
  Yes. You could look at much of lower Alabama. Food Deserts are typically defined as 10 or more miles from a grocery; but where no public transportation infrastructure exists, are practically much more compact. Anecdotally, in a ~ suburban Alabama county, I have family that was 7 miles from a grocery until dollar general came in about 5 years ago. Here's a related article https://abc3340.com/news/local/wal-marts-shutdown-in-creates-new-food-deserts https://abc3340.com/news/local/wal-marts-shutdown-in-creates...
• tzs 3y ago
  From the University of Alabama Institute for Human Right, "Food Insecurity in Birmingham, AL" [1]: > In Alabama alone, close to two million residents live in a food desert, and almost 150,000 of them live in Birmingham. This accounts for 69% of the city’s total population. A 2019 update also found that there is at least one area that is identified as a food desert in each of Birmingham’s nine City Council Districts. The University of Alabama's Innovation for Rural Alabama site has some information on food deserts in rural Alabama [2]. [1] https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2022/06/13/food-insecurity-in-birmingham-al/ https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2022/06/13/food-insecurity... [2] http://innovationforruralalabama.ua.edu/food-deserts.html http://innovationforruralalabama.ua.edu/food-deserts.html