The food deserts of rural America

The term “food desert” has gained a lot of atten­tion in the media in the last sev­eral years (much to the cha­grin of peo­ple who like deserts and don’t appre­ci­ate the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion). I’ve also heard “food vac­uum” and “area of low food access,” but noth­ing gives the men­tal pic­ture of what it’s like to live in a place with no food like “food desert.”

When most peo­ple hear “food desert,” they think of places like West Oakland, Detroit, or inner-city Chicago. Personally, I think of places like Harrison, a Nebraska town of 279 peo­ple. A res­i­dent of Harrison called me for help sev­eral months ago because the own­ers of their local gro­cery store have got­ten sick and need to sell or shut down. If they close, it’s a 50 mile drive to the next near­est gro­cery store. I’ve had con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers of Native American nations who talk about dri­ving 110 miles through a moun­tain pass to get to their near­est town.

The para­dox of our unhealthy food sys­tem is that many rural towns lack healthy food access, even as the food we eat is grown in rural places. To put it sim­ply, our cur­rent food sys­tem is fail­ing the very com­mu­ni­ties that grow our food.

I con­sider myself very lucky when it comes to food. I have land on which I can grow veg­eta­bles and raise ani­mals, and time to tend them. There’s a gro­cery store in my town, and I have a good job that allows me to afford to buy what I can’t grow or process myself. I do have an “out of town gro­cery list” for exotic sta­ples — wasabi, coconut milk, organic any­thing — but I can cer­tainly live with­out those things if I needed to.

So how is it pos­si­ble that peo­ple in farm coun­try have a hard time find­ing food? In short, it’s complicated.

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