Recognition of food deserts as a major
public health concern has prompted a number of initiatives to address the lack of resources available for those living in both urban and rural areas. On the larger scale, there have been national public policy initiatives.
United States Federal and state policy initiatives The United States government responded to food insecurity with several programs, one of which being the Domestic Nutrition Assistance Programs (DNAPs). Other programs include the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplement Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and food pantries and emergency kitchens. In 2013, there was a significant lack of legislation on local and state levels to address the problem efficiently and adequately. As food insecurity has reached drastic levels, significant pressure for the government to qualify the problem as a human rights issue has proven futile. In 2010, the
US Department of Health and Human Services, the
US Department of Agriculture, and the
US Department of the Treasury announced their partnership in the development of the
Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI). Intending to expand access to healthy food options in both urban and rural communities across the country, HFFI has helped expand and develop grocery stores, corner stores, and
farmers' markets by providing financial and technical assistance to communities. The creation of such resources provides nutritious food options to those living in food deserts. HFFI has awarded $195 million to community development organizations in 35 states. Between 2011 and 2015, HFFI created or supported 958 projects aimed at healthy food access. The HFFI has supported the development of statewide programs across the country, in California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the state program, the Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), provides grants and loans to healthy food retailers to create or renovate markets, including supermarkets, small stores, and farmers' markets, in low-income urban and rural areas across Pennsylvania. Because operating in underserved areas is more financially straining on retailers, the program provides subsidized financing incentives for retailers to open in areas with a high need. The Pennsylvania program's success influenced many other states to launch similar programs.
Farmers' markets and community gardens Local and community efforts have made strides in combating a lack of access to nutritious food in food deserts.
Farmers' markets provide residents with fresh fruits and vegetables. Usually in public and central areas of a community, such as a park, farmers' markets are most effective if they are easily accessible. Farmers' markets tend to be more successful in urban than rural areas due to large geographic distances in rural areas that make the markets difficult to access. The expansion of SNAP to farmers' markets helps make nutritious foods increasingly affordable. Each year, SNAP participants spend around $70 billion in benefits. As of 2015, more than $19.4 billion were redeemed at farmers' markets. The Double Up Food Bucks program doubles what every
Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) dollar spent at a farm stand is worth. This incentivizes locals to shop for fresh foods, rather than processed foods.
Community gardens can play a similar role in food deserts, generating fresh produce by having residents share in the maintenance of food production. In 2018, The Food Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania, had 22 farmers' markets in operation throughout Philadelphia. To increase accessibility for healthier food and fresh produce, Food Trust farmers' markets accept SNAP benefits. Customers have reported improved diets with an increase in vegetable intake as well as healthier snacking habits. Community gardens address fresh food scarcity. The nonprofit group DC Urban Greens operates a community garden in Southeast Washington, DC, an area labeled by the US Department of Agriculture as a food desert. The garden provides fresh produce to those in the city who do not have easily-accessible grocery stores nearby. The organization also sets up farmers' markets in the city. In the food desert of
North Las Vegas, a neighborhood with one of the highest levels of food insecurity, another community garden is addressing food scarcity. The community gardens can aid in education and access to new foods. Organizations such as the
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network use community-building gardens to promote community around healthy food.
Food cooperatives Food cooperatives (co-ops) are defined as being community driven produce markets. Food co-ops have become a mechanism that communities have used in response to food deserts. Since they are run by community members, these groups can have a more direct decision to sell more culturally relevant and healthier produce to the overall community. Proponents to the implementation of food co-ops argue that it offers better dietary options which can uplift the most impacted communities in food deserts. There have been efforts by urban American cities to implement food co-operations as a larger policy reform. Organizations like the
West Oakland Food Collaborative have made food co-operations one of the components to their larger proposal to tackle food insecurity. There have also been efforts to integrate current federal aid to food co-operations. The Virginia Fresh Match (VFM) program worked with community efforts such as food co-ops to accept federally funded initiatives such as
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as a way to promote healthier eating habits. Limitations to food co-operations come with the emphasis of
community governance and different approaches to reallocate federal funding. Given that food co-ops are community-run, maintaining the market requires community members to dedicate hours to it. Previous government policy agreements with market chains have also made it difficult to repurpose these now-enclosed spaces, with the discontinued
Albertsons market chains being a leading example of this predicament. Cities with food deserts, such as
Detroit, have advocated instead to create policies that financially incentivize healthy markets to build their establishments in these communities. Yet, research conducted in
Flint's food desert found that policy reform should not focus on community access, since the implementation of healthy grocery stores will not decrease food insecurity or create healthier diets.
Urban agriculture Urban agriculture (UA) is another way that helps when it comes to having access to fresh food in urban cities. Urban agriculture is one of the responses combating the lack of fresh foods in communities that need fresh foods. Historically born in America out of the need to alleviate hunger among Americans during troubling economic times, urban agriculture was significant during economic depressions. Mayors called on owners of vacant lots to lend their property to allow the city government to create gardening programs for hundreds of unemployed people to grow potatoes to sustain their families. The economic success and improvement in food production of these programs led to urban gardens being used to supply food that supplied food for local communities, to augment the agricultural industry's capacity to send commercial production to troops overseas, thus supporting the war economy. This encouraged the growth of involvement in urban agriculture outside of war efforts, and in post-war decades, the urban agriculture movement became less of a top-down directive from national organizations and federal agencies and became more of a grassroots movement with social and environmental justice groups continuing to shape urban agricultural practices. By the 1970s, urban farms were representative of community empowerment and grassroots activism, along with the initial reasons of education, nutrition, security, and employment. In more recent years, urban agricultural sites have continued to be used for youth education, cultural preservation, or to assist in community food security, with the support of the USDA's Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production grants towards urban agriculture initiatives that began distribution in 2020. Urban agriculture has many benefits such as being a "local source of fresh healthy food", and bringing communities together and reducing environmental problems. For example, in
Oakland, California, there has been a rise in using urban agriculture as a means to get areas that are in the middle of food deserts to grow and produce their own food.
Meal delivery, food trucks, and ride shares An entrepreneurial solution to food insecurity in food deserts is
food trucks due to their capacities to transport groceries to residents living in areas with low retail access. In major urban centers such as Boston, mobile food markets travel to low-income areas with fresh produce. The trucks travel to assisted living communities, schools, workplaces, and health centers. The increased availability of online food retailers and delivery services, such as
AmazonFresh and
FreshDirect, can also help in food deserts by delivering food straight to residences. The ability of elderly people, disabled people, and people who live far from supermarkets to use SNAP benefits online to order groceries is a major resource. For those who lack transportation options,
vehicle for hire services may be vital resources to increase access to nutritious foods in food deserts.
Youth education Several studies have cited improved dietary behaviors through educating children on healthy nutrition practices and food systems in school settings. Empowering children to make healthy food choices and learn about the origins of their food can encourage long-term healthy habits and attitudes around food, helping to promote consumption of healthy foods to the best of their extent in areas deemed food deserts. Youth education programs around nutrition, gardening, and food systems that establish and maintain community gardens can also make nutritious, fresh produce more easily accessible by residents living in food deserts. For example, the Grow Hartford Program was implemented in a school in
Connecticut to have students address an issue in their community and they chose to focus on
food justice. The youth involved worked on farms in the area to learn about the processes of food production and the importance and variety of vegetables. The program led kids to start a
community garden at their school. The program allowed the students to engage in hands-on learning to educate them about agriculture, food scarcity, and nutrition while helping bridge the gap of food access for some of their peers who could now bring home food from the surrounding farms or the school garden.
Baltimore City Public Schools work in tandem with Great Kids Farm in
Catonsville to create educational field trip experiences that teach kids about food waste, farm-fresh cooking, and planting. Great Kids Farm works with Food Corps, which actively works alongside educators and school
nutritionists to provide nourishing meals and food education. Their work is actively creating a new generation of young people who are given the education and experiences needed to make nutritious choices later. A
school garden, or a community
urban farm with a
youth program, where education about urban agriculture is implemented takes different approaches. One of them being the science route of growing food, which is a more technical way of teaching students about botany and horticulture. Another approach is focused on sharing the political and cultural knowledge of growing food, which looks like teaching students about food justice. Beyond the role of urban agriculture, the debate surrounding these approaches is generally condensed to the question of whether students should be taught political subjects in school settings in order to preserve a neutral learning environment for fear of indoctrinating students towards a certain political perspective. In accordance, schools often require a tight connection between their curriculum and gardens to meet certain academic standards of excellence. Due to the nature of urbanization, there are limited opportunities for youth to interact with natural elements, but school gardens with rigid horticultural-based curriculum emphasize the exploration of important scientific concepts such as growth and decay, insect–plant interactions,
nutrient cycling, and
soil ecology. Each approach produces different results in what the students learn and how they engage with their community or civic processes. A study that tests civic and/or community participation, conducted by the
Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at
Cornell University, surveys high school students between the ages 14–18 and found that involvement in urban agriculture fosters youth civic engagement because programs often focus on positive youth development, empowerment, community sustainability, and
social justice. The argument of
technical versus
political education is applicable in identifying the quality of school garden education between private education and public schools. The source of financial support creates a systematic difference between public and private schools that is evident through the demographics of students and teachers. Private school enrollment is dependent on the surrounding area income, which exhibits the opportunity for high-income families to choose where to send their children, while youth from low-income families are sent to public schools. In impoverished urban neighborhoods with a majority demographic of
people of color, students who attend public school are less likely to have access to learning in social and physical environments outside of school. The extent of political or technical education in school gardens is contingent on the type of schooling, also contributing to the differences in the outcomes of civic and/or community engagement. ==References==