6/26

Above: Map of food deserts by USDA

Three different cities each with a similar story, all reported in the last few days:

From the July 22 Baltimore Sun:

With one in four Baltimoreans living in a food desert, city officials have a long road ahead to deliver on promises of healthy, affordable and accessible food options. One of the city's approaches follows a tried-and-true roadmap that involves offering incentives, like tax breaks for locating in underserved areas, to retailers and developers — also known as "fresh food financing." Created over the last decade, these types of incentives work; in Philadelphia, the number of people living in food deserts was cut by 56 percent this way, for example. There is a simpler, less costly solution under consideration, however: changing when food stamps are distributed.

From the July 25 Los Angeles Times:

Filipinotown is a food desert, a neighborhood high in fast-food joints and low in grocery stores and healthful eating options, said Ignacio, the project leader for the Asian and Pacific Islander Obesity Prevention Alliance.

From the July 24 Springfield, Missouri News-Leader:

When we look at the food desert in Springfield, it certainly doesn’t mean everyone in that area has limited access,” said Mooney. “Really, Springfield is a town where, if you have a car, you can get to where you’re going.” However, for those who don’t have access to a car, food — especially fresh, healthy food — can be very difficult to get their hands on. To build his food-desert map, Mooney plotted “qualified food stores,” which means full-size grocery stores, and drew half-mile circles around each. Any census tract that qualified as low income and didn’t touch the circle surrounding a grocery store was marked as having low access.

In the same week there were very similar reports on food deserts in Indianapolis, Duluth, Portland, Oregon, Chattanooga, and rural West Virginia.  

Next time, some discussion.