Stranded in a Food Desert: The Reality of Many Low-Income Americans
Whitney Clevenger (PPS ‘25)
Why is it that the United States has some of the highest rates of diet-related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease despite its status as a wealthy and developed nation? The answer has everything to do with food accessibility. The USDA estimates that about 19 million Americans live in ‘food deserts.’ These are defined as areas without access to affordable, quality, and nutritious foods where at least a third of the population lives more than a mile away from a supermarket for urban areas, or more than ten miles for rural areas.
Race and income play a significant role in one’s food accessibility fate. Low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately face the challenges of living in food deserts. Instead of supermarkets, these communities have the most access to fast food restaurants and convenience stores that sell highly processed food with low nutritional value. However, this food is affordable and often the only alternative to going hungry. Traveling is not always viable as lower-income families are less likely to have reliable transportation and healthy produce at supermarkets is not necessarily affordable anyway.
So, why is junk food so cheap? Agricultural subsidies from the federal government, originally intended to provide economic stability to farmers during the Great Depression, finance mass production of corn, soy, and wheat. These subsidized crops are used in animal feed and as key ingredients in highly processed foods, significantly reducing their costs. According to the Food Revolution Network, the price of processed foods and industrial meat has gone down 20–30%, while the price of fruits and vegetables has increased 40% in the last several decades. Furthermore, consuming junk foods packed with high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients that medical professionals caution us to stay away from is the only financially practical option for many low-income Americans.
Although the definition of ‘food desert’ necessitates limited geographic access to supermarkets, incentivizing supermarkets to move into low-income areas is not a productive solution unless the price of high quality, nutritious foods drop to an affordable level. Proximity does not necessarily guarantee access. To address food deserts, the federal farm subsidies that finance the production of corn, soy, and wheat should be reallocated to fruits, vegetables, and other more nutritionally valuable crops.
Subsidies function to try and take some of the risk out of farming, whether that risk be from catastrophic weather events or market instability that cause sudden price drops. Furthermore, without a buffer to account for detrimental weather and labor costs, if it is expensive to produce nutritious food, it will be expensive to buy nutritious food as well. Fruit and vegetable farmers still need to make a profit somehow because they do not receive the federal subsidies that other farming industries use to mitigate the effects of fluctuating income. However, reallocating existing agricultural subsidies, even 10%, to fruit and vegetable farmers could make buying nutritious food a reality for low-income Americans. Creating a proportional share of subsidies for commodities like corn, soy, and wheat and specialty crops like fruits and vegetables can level the high price distortion.
With more affordable prices, fresh produce could be incorporated into the convenient stores already existing in these communities because given the opportunity, low-income individuals would buy more fruits and vegetables. This is not to say that attracting supermarkets to food deserts is not a priority, but lowering costs is a crucial starting point. Individuals can advocate for the reallocation of agricultural subsidies to fruit and vegetable farmers by contacting local, state, and national representatives via email or written letters to express that it can be an effective remedy for food deserts. The Agricultural Fairness Alliance, a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower communities and accelerate policy changes to make nutritious foods accessible to every American, is also a source individuals can utilize to learn more about food deserts and what they can do about them. It would benefit the health of many Americans to be able to go to their community’s closest store, whether it be a supermarket or not, and have the choice to buy fresh fruits and vegetables for themselves and their families rather than being forced to buy preservative-packed foods out of financial necessity.
Whitney Clevenger (PPS ’25) is a Public Policy Undergraduate at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. This piece was submitted as an op-ed in the Spring ’23 PUBPOL 301 course. This content does not represent the official or unofficial views of the Sanford School, Polis, Duke University, or any entity or individual other than the author.