City and Country Food Deserts

A bit of a rewrite and the addition of more information. Poverty and ruralness have been with us forever. Food deserts were discovered around the late 1980s. The later has a connection to the former. Prior to 1980, small towns and poor neighborhoods could generally count on having a grocery store, perhaps even several. It has changed since 1980 due to consolidations and profitability. (The term food desert was coined in 1995 by a task force studying what was then a relatively new phenomenon.)

Urban environments suffer a similar fate. Tens of millions of Americans live in low-income communities with no easy access to fresh groceries. The general consensus is these places do not have what it takes to attract and sustain a supermarket. They’re either too poor or too sparsely populated to generate sufficient spending on groceries. Or the harder part is they can not overcome a racist pattern of corporate redlining.

Food Deserts in America: Understanding the Impact on Communities with Limited Food Access – The Annie E. Casey Foundation

What Is a Food Desert?

Neigh­bor­hoods with lim­it­ed food access (or ​“food deserts”) are geo­graph­ic areas. Res­i­dents in these areas have few to no con­ve­nient options for secur­ing afford­able and healthy foods. Espe­cial­ly access to fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles. Neigh­bor­hoods with lim­it­ed access to high-qual­i­ty food can cre­ate extra, every­day hur­dles that make it hard­er for kids and fam­i­lies to grow healthy and strong. For example, when peo­ple have bet­ter access to super­mar­kets, they are more like­ly to have nutri­tious diets and low­er rates of chron­ic dis­ease.

Redefin­ing Food Deserts: Evolv­ing the Lan­guage Around Food Access

Experts, researchers and gov­ern­ment agen­cies are increas­ing­ly rec­og­niz­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of the term “food desert” when refer­ring to neigh­bor­hoods with lim­it­ed food access. Among the lim­i­ta­tions iden­ti­fied, the term.  

• sug­gests the pri­ma­ry prob­lem is about the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment, such as dis­tance to food, rather than inten­tion­al deci­sions that have led to lim­it­ed gro­cery stores in low-income communities;
• nei­ther acknowl­edges nor cap­tures oth­er aspects of the issue, such as food afford­abil­i­ty, store hours and cul­tur­al accept­abil­i­ty of food; 
• does not acknowl­edge food qual­i­ty and the high preva­lence of unhealthy foods in con­ve­nience stores in urban, low-income neigh­bor­hoods; and
• is deficit-ori­ent­ed and doesn’t take into account the abil­i­ty to get gro­ceries online or oth­er resilient food access strate­gies, such as farm­ers mar­kets and com­mu­ni­ty gardens.

More descrip­tive, thought­ful lan­guage can help pro­mote solu­tions that go beyond the built envi­ron­ment and address under­ly­ing issues. At the same time, since ​“food desert” is still the most com­mon­ly used short-hand phrase, this post uses that term along with more descrip­tive language. 

Where Are Food Deserts in America?

States with the great­est share of res­i­dents liv­ing in low-income, low-food access areas (for­mer­ly called ​“food deserts”) in the Unit­ed States? Nine of the top 10 are locat­ed in the South, accord­ing to a 2025 analy­sis of his­tor­i­cal data from the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas. Mis­sis­sip­pi ranks first, with 30% of its res­i­dents liv­ing in these neigh­bor­hoods, fol­lowed by 29% of New Mexico’s pop­u­la­tion and 26% of Arkansas’s pop­u­la­tion. States in the North­east [includ­ing New York (4%), Rhode Island (5%), Ver­mont (5%) and New Jer­sey (5%)] are among the least like­ly to have res­i­dents liv­ing in areas with lim­it­ed food access.

Large met­ro­pol­i­tan areas? Thirty-two percent of Mem­phis res­i­dents in were clas­si­fied as liv­ing in low-income com­mu­ni­ties having lim­it­ed access to healthy food, accord­ing to a 2021 USA Facts analy­sis of the same USDA data. No oth­er large metro city had a greater share of its pop­u­la­tion affect­ed.

One local non­prof­it is fight­ing back with a 44-foot refrig­er­at­ed trail­er. Called The Mobile Gro­cer, this mini super­mar­ket-on-wheels trav­els to dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hood food deserts. It arrives packed with afford­able gro­ceries (includ­ing fresh pro­duce) and helps to feed thou­sands of Mem­phis res­i­dents each week.

San Anto­nio was home to the nation’s sec­ond-high­est rate of res­i­dents liv­ing in low-income com­mu­ni­ties with insuf­fi­cient food access (26%, tied with River­side, Cal­i­for­nia). The city’s Healthy Cor­ner Store Pro­gram is part­ner­ing with small neigh­bor­hood cor­ner stores to address this issue. Today, the pro­gram spans a net­work of over 45 stores work­ing to fill in San Antonio’s gro­cery gaps.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, lim­it­ed access to food is more com­mon in:

• com­mu­ni­ties with high­er rates of pover­ty, whether rur­al or urban;
• neigh­bor­hoods with greater shares of peo­ple of col­or; and
• rur­al Amer­i­can Indi­an or Alas­ka Native communities.

A 2022 study exam­ined U.S. cen­sus tracts by race and eth­nic­i­ty, pover­ty lev­el and access to qual­i­ty food stores. It found high-pover­ty, non-white (par­tic­u­lar­ly Black) neigh­bor­hoods con­tin­ue to have the least amount of close neighborhood access to super­mar­kets.

A 2023 analy­sis found. In the most remote parts of the coun­try with Amer­i­can Indi­an and Alas­ka Native pop­u­la­tions were heav­i­ly over-rep­re­sent­ed in areas with lim­it­ed super­mar­ket access.

“Grocery Stores in Low Income Areas and Small Communities,” Angry Bear