Culturing Food Deserts: Recognizing the Power of Community-Based Solutions
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Portland State University PDXScholar Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Publications and Presentations Planning 1-1-2017 Culturing Food Deserts: Recognizing the Power of Community-Based Solutions Catherine Brinkley University of California, Davis Subhashni Raj SUNY University at Buffalo Megan Horst Portland State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/usp_fac Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Citation Details Horst, M., McClintock, N., & Hoey, L. (2017). The intersection of planning, urban agriculture, and food justice: a review of the literature. Journal of the American Planning Association, 83(3), 277-295. This Article is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. CULTURING FOOD DESERTS: RECOGNIZING THE POWER OF COMMUNITY-BASED SOLUTIONS Culturing Food Deserts: Recognizing the Power of Community- Based Solutions CATHERINE BRINKLEY, SUBHASHNI RAJ and MEGAN HORST Food deserts, places where residents lack nearby supermarkets, have received a ention from the media, academics, policy-makers, and activists. The popular policy response is to establish a new supermarket. Yet, communities who live in food deserts may already have their own well-adapted strategies to access healthy food. In this article, we argue that policy-makers all too often overlook in situ opportunities, and may even disrupt low-cost healthy food access options with supermarket interventions. We use evidence to make two main points. First, we demonstrate the limitations of focusing on food deserts when interpreting diet-related health disparities. By conducting a US national county-level multi-variable spatial regression analysis of socio-economic status, built environment and food environment factors, we determine that diet-related health outcomes do not clearly correlate with supermarket access. Instead, health outcomes are most strongly associated with income and race. This suggests that interventions to improve healthy eating should begin with a focus on anti-poverty. Second, we identify alternative paths, beyond supermarkets, to healthy food access through a literature review. We ground-truth our ndings with interviews from Public Health and Planning Department o cials in seventeen counties with a high percentage of the population living in a food desert, but low levels of diet-related disease. Our research suggests new avenues for research and nancing centred around existing community-based practices of established food banks and farm-to-market opportunities. This research shifts the conversation on communities did not have the purchasing food desert classi cation and supermarket power to sustain a supermarket business intervention to supporting already existing, model. A review of forty-nine food desert prevalent, and well-adapted community studies providesprovides evidenceevidence wherethat lacklack ofof a e orts. The starting point for this conver- supermarket1 compounds individual dis- sation is a critique of the term, associated advantages in the ability to procure a healthy methodology, and various policy responses diet (Beaulac et al., 2009). Food is generally to ‘food deserts’. The term ‘food desert’ more ‘expensive and relatively unavailable’ originated in the early 1990s to describe (Cummins and Macintyre, 2002, p. 2115) lack of nearby a ordable, healthy food retail leading to fewer healthy food options (Cummins and Macintyre, 2002, p. 2115). (Beaulac et al., 2009) and quanti ed negative The term successfully drew a ention to the diet-related health outcomes, including spatial injustice of the food system, where obesity and diabetes (Larson et al., 2009; more sparsely populated or low-income Morland et al., 2006). More recently, scholars 328BUILT ENVIRONMENTVOL43NO3 BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 43 NO369 3 URBAN AND REGIONAL FOOD SYSTEMS and public agencies have a empted to may have their own well-adapted systems operationalize the food desert term through of street food (Ammerman, 2012), smaller mapping and measurement. An example supermarkets (Raja et al., 2008), farmers’ exists with the Food Atlas project of the markets (Larsen andand Gilliland,Gilliand, 2009) and United States Department of Agriculture urban gardens (Wang et al., 2014). By focusing (USDA), which de nes a food desert as an myopically only on supermarkets in the food area without a supermarket within 1 or 10 environment, the term misses other important miles for urban and rural areas respectively sources of food in communities including (USDA, 2015). According to the USDA, 23.5 unhealthy food options, such as fast food ven- million Americans live in food deserts. dors. To this end, a recent review of sixteen We argue that the food desert term is studies finds that fast food consumption imprecise. First, the research and professional correlates withwith obesityobesity (Rosencheck,(Rosenheck, 2008). community often casually conflates spatial Another review of forty articles finds that fast and other, perhaps more important, factors food restaurants are more prevalent in low- of access. For example, Drewnowski et al. income and ethnic neighbourhoods (Fleisch- (2014) find that in Seattle and Paris, two cities hacker et al., 2011). with different built and food environments, Practice mirrors the above flaws in research. physical proximity to supermarkets was not For example, the Robert Wood Johnson predictive of obesity, whereas the following Foundation award winning County Health factors were: income levels, surrounding Rankings & Roadmaps tool includes a variable property values, and preferences for shop- ‘healthy food access’, which measures spatial ping at lower-cost stores. The focus on geo- proximity to a supermarket. While subtle, use graphic proximity to supermarkets also reduces of ‘food deserts’ as a healthy food indicator attention to explanatory variables related to arguably perverts policy-oriented results power structures, such as race and income, by overlooking spatial proximity to other which are rarely considered in models. healthy food sources as well as economic Indeed, a growing number of studies find barriers to access. Because the data for diet- socio-economic factors to be significant related health are primarily framed around predictors of health conditions compared to supermarket access, it is no wonder that the factors measuring built and food environ- chief policy response lies in publically-funded ments (Drenowski et al., 2014; Raj et al., supermarket financing. Chrisinger (2016) 2016). The result is that work on food deserts reviewed 126 new supermarket financing too often ‘bounds health problems within initiatives over the past decade, finding that low-income communities’ (Bedore, 2010), 80 per cent use federal public funding. A disregards the agency of such communities broad range of literature has documented to generate alternative responses that deserve that although new supermarkets can help support, and ignores the policies and actors alleviate food insecurity in some contexts which shape disparities in food systems and (Cummins et al., 2005), more often than not, accessibility (Shannon, 2014). new supermarkets alone are insufficient for Second, the food desert term is far too health behaviour change (Morland et al., 2006; narrow in its focus on supermarket retail. Wang et al., 2007; Larson et al., 2009; Walker The term ‘desert’ often implies a lack of life, et al., 2010; Sadler et al., 2013; Cummins et though biologists are apt to point out that the al., 2014; Elbel et al., 2015; Fuller et al., 2015; desert biome contains thriving ecosystems if Dubowitz et al., 2015). Complicating matters, you know how to look for them. Emphasis on many people do not shop at their closest measuring proximity to supermarkets ignores stores (Drewnowski et al., 2012; Cannuscio et other sources of food in neighbourhoods al., 2014). The failure of supermarket inter- and people’s resourcefulness. Food deserts ventions is compounded by several docu- BUILT370 ENVIRONMENT VOL 43 NO 3 BUILTENVIRONMENTVOL43NO3293 CULTURING FOOD DESERTS: RECOGNIZING THE POWER OF COMMUNITY-BASED SOLUTIONS URBAN AND REGIONAL FOOD SYSTEMS mented cases where communities resist the publicinterviewed o cials public in outlierofficials counties. in outlier The counties. case Table 1.County-level descriptive statistics. The Supermarket proximity variable (PROX) uses the USDA use of eminent domain to acquire land and studiesThe case allow studies us toallow triangulate us to triangulate our regression our de nition in measuring the percentage of the population that is further than one mile from a supermarket in urban counties and more than 10 miles (16 km) from a supermarket in rural counties. public funds to finance supermarket inter- regression ndings, identify findings, potential identify omi potential ed variables omitted ventions (Sibilla, 2013; Horst et al., 2016). New ofvariables importance, of importance, and explore and explore sorting sorting or eco- or Category Variable Short Units Descriptive Data Data methods of promoting healthy food access logicaleco-logical fallacies fallacies (Robinson, (Robinson, 1950) where1950) wheregroup Name Variable Statistics Year Source Name are needed. orgroup spatial or spatial correlations correlations of