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Food Desert Presentation
- 1. + Can community gardens and farmer’s markets end food deserts? Tim Sharp
- 2. + How To Identify Food Deserts Low-Income Criteria Access Criteria
- 3. + Greenville’s Situation? 0 7 143.5 Miles µ Level of Social Deprivation 0.11 - 0.61 0.62 - 1.19 1.20 - 3.54 0 7 143.5 Miles µ Level of Supermarket Access 0.05 - 0.89 0.90 - 1.11 1.12 - 3.35 Deprivation Access+
- 4. + Blue Areas = Food Deserts 0 7 143.5 Miles µ Typology of Block Groups Cluster 1 High Deprivation, High Access 2 Low Deprivation, High Access 3 Low Deprivation, Low Access 4 High Deprivation, Low Access High Deprivation + Low Access
- 5. + Current criteria does not measure the safety of the communities. Crime and lack of sidewalks are a barrier to walking to the grocery store. Safety
- 6. + Impact of Community Gardens Number of Food Deserts 8 4 7 4
- 7. + Impact Community Gardens: 150,499 Farmer’s Markets: 47,487 Together: 162,984
- 9. + The Benefits of Gardening Life Quality Economic Wellbeing Social Wellbeing
- 10. + Comparison of Gardeners and Non- Gardeners Participating Not Participating Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Neighborhood Participation
- 11. + Prices of a Farmer’s Market $230.18 $205.08 Prices drop by 12.7% over 3 years
- 12. + Time Local options are seasonal solutions
- 13. + Grocery Stores can Provide Year-Round Access to Fresh Produce Affordable and Close
- 15. + Network of Smaller Stores in Urban Environments Urban Stores Suburban Stores Size
- 16. + Not all stores are equal Supermarkets Grocery Stores Convenience Stores Need to improve the availability of fresh produce at grocery stores.
- 17. + Comparative Pricing Supermarkets Grocery Stores Convenience Stores Grocery stores have similar prices to supermarkets.
- 18. + Retail Intervention Lowest Levels (Less than 1 Serving) Low Levels (2 Servings or Less) Retail intervention allowed more than half of the participants to change their diets.
- 19. + Retail Intervention Intervention vs Comparison Decreased Fruit and Vegetable Intake.
- 20. + Characteristics of Stores Quality + Appearance Urban Stores Suburban Stores Stores in lower income areas tend to be lacking in quality and appearance.
- 21. + Behavior Healthy Unhealthy Healthy Unhealthy Healthy Unhealthy
Editor's Notes
- Food deserts are communities that lack access to affordable fresh produce. We all know the difference in how you feel after eating a salad and a cookout milkshake. Eating crap makes you feel like crap. We like to say that we could eat X everyday, but what if you actually had to? The difference is that we have the privilege of options. We also know the health implications of an unhealthy diet, and as parents we would most likely try not to feed our kids unhealthy food every day. By restricting the number of food options a person has is restricting their freedom.
- There are two components to classifying a community as a food deserts: high deprivation and low access. High deprivation of a community comes in the form of poverty, where at least 20% of the community is below poverty, and access to transportation, where at least 30% of the community has no car. Low access is divided into physical access of living within one mile from a supermarket, and economic access of being able to afford the produce at the supermarket.
- The areas in blue have a high level of deprivation and the areas in red have a low level of supermarket access.
- The areas in blue are food deserts. They have high deprivation and low supermarket access.
- The current measures of food deserts is flawed, because they only take into account two variables. There is a third, crucial aspect of safety. A mile in a safe neighborhood could seem like less of a burden than a mile in an unsafe neighborhood. Areas with high crime rates and low amounts of sidewalks should taken into account as they are added obstacles for people to reach supermarkets. The amount of food deserts increases significantly when these factors are taken into account.
- The current measures for food deserts do not take into account alternative food choices such as community gardens and farmer’s markets. This is a map of a county in Edmonton, Canada. When only access to supermarkets is measured, there are 8 food deserts. When supermarkets and community gardens are measured there are 4 food deserts. When supermarkets and farmer’s markets are measured there are 7 food deserts. When all fresh food sources are measured together there are 4 remaining food deserts. Community gardens had a larger impact on the number of food deserts in this area.
- Let’s look at how many people are impacted comparatively by community gardens and famer’s markets. For the sake of time and your brains, I did the math for you. We can see from this data that community gardens brought fresh food to a significantly larger number of people. 103,012 people to be exact. We can look at this data in a number of ways. We can interpret that community gardens are more effective than farmer’s markets at reducing the number of food deserts.
- Or we when we look at all of the data together we can see that community gardens and farmer’s markets generally cluster around supermarkets. There 96 supermarkets, 61 community gardens, and 17 farmers markets. It would take a divergence of 4 of either of these to stomp out the limited physical access to fresh food in this area completely.
- The benefits of community gardens falls under three categories: Life quality, economic, and social. This shows that there are more benefits than just the access of affordable fresh food. Community gardens have benefits that supermarkets and farmer’s markets cannot replicate.
- This is a comparison of people who participated in a community garden and people who did not participate in a community garden. This shows that the fruit and vegetable consumption is higher by gardeners than non-gardeners. Gardeners are 3.5 times more likely to consume at least 5 portions of fruits and vegetables daily than non-gardeners. Also, gardeners are much more likely to participate in neighborhood beautification projects.
- The biggest complaint about farmer’s markets is that they are too expensive. This is a graph of the prices of a farmer’s market that was placed in a food desert in Leeds, UK. This graph shows that the average price of a farmer’s market food basket dropped by 12.7% over 3 years. Originally, the customers at the farmer’s market paid 20% more for their food, but after 3 years they paid only 5% more.
- Here’s the biggest handicap of local food. The growing season is 25 weeks out of the year. This means that locally produced food is only a seasonal solution. There is an emerging trend for year-round farmer’s markets, but until that trend comes to all farmer’s markets, they cannot be seen as a sole solution.
- Grocery stores are going to need to be relied to provide year round options to low income individuals. Is solution simply to build more grocery stores? Let’s find out.
- You can see that in Erie County, New York, restaurants are almost equally distributed. Supermarkets (shown in green) are not equally distributed. Despite not being equally distributed either, there are more convenience and grocery stores.
- In urban areas, grocery stores tend to be smaller, and in suburban areas the grocery stores tend to be bigger. There tends to be a preexisting network of smaller stores.
- Let’s look at the availability of fresh produce at these different options. 70% of grocery stores had fresh produce. This is better than the 30% at convenience stores, but we still need to improve the availability of fresh produce at grocery stores.
- When looking at the prices of a balanced food basket we can see that supermarkets and grocery stores have very similar overall prices. Convenience stores are much more expensive. This shows that we might be overestimating the prevalence of food deserts in our urban areas.
- Let’s look at what happens when you add a grocery store in a food desert. In Leeds, UK more than half of the participants improved their fruit and vegetable intake. This is super positive.
- But, now let’s look at what happened in Philadelphia. The fruit and vegetable intake actually decreased. This shows that there has to be more factors at play than just physical acces
- If we look at the quality and appearance rating of low income, urban stores, we can see that the internal and external quality and the produce quality scores of the stores suck compared to suburban stores. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but these are qualities of a grocery store that we take for granted and could definitely impact our buying habits if we suddenly did not have them. A common complaint of shoppers was the cleanness and odor of the stores.
- A common idea of why retail intervention might not work is that the individuals are lacking the knowledge of how to eat healthily, but that is not the case. In an ideal situation, shown at the top, the majority of low-income parents’ purchases would be healthy options, but they are forced to make cost-effective decisions so that they can put food on the table every night. Most of the parents shop once a month at grocery stores and fresh food would not last the whole month. In addition, immediate purchasing decisions further decrease healthy choices, because of the marketing strategies of the grocery store. Price oriented labeling, the layout of the store, and the inability to taste fresh produce sways the consumers’ decisions.