Food Desert vs Food Apartheid
There’s a new word on the street these days: food apartheid. Many argue it’s more accurate to discuss areas lacking in fresh produce, grocery stores, and affordable healthy food options as such, rather than as food deserts. Why? Let’s back up a bit and start with some definitions.

A Food Desert
In about 2008 the USDA began gathering data to determine what a food desert was, and how they should define it at the federal level as something that needed addressing. Many Americans lack access to affordable, healthy, culturally relevant foods, and making this federally measurable and understandable was a growing concern. By giving these physical spaces a federally regulated definition, it arguably allows the government to make policy that could eliminate such spaces.
Per the USDA, “A food desert is a low-income census tract where either a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store.” Low income means 20 percent or more of individuals are below the federal poverty line. A low-income census tract is any tract in which 33 percent of the population is over a mile from a grocery store in urban areas, or 10 miles in rural.
Indeed, since the USDA officially made this definition, they’ve created a comprehensive food desert map and recognize the gravity and need to address the rising food insecurity in policy.
However, many also reject the term.
Though it’s definition may be sound, many argue that it’s goals and approach are off. If the government is trying to define these spaces in an effort to create policies that will increase food access, food security, nutrition, and health, looking at them as food deserts is off the mark. Instead, they propose food apartheid as a more accurate term and way of understanding the problem at hand.
A Food Apartheid:
Rather than see a lack of affordable, fresh food as a geographic problem (desert) using the word apartheid points to social and economic roots.
As the Center for Health and Journalism explains, deserts are commonly seen as “lacking”. However, they’re indeed very abundant and teaming with life and food. Similarly, the USDS’s identified food deserts are often seen as spaces “lacking” “disadvantaged” and “helpless”. Yet over half of Detroit’s population qualifies. It’s a serious problem. But surely there are resources, opportunities, and food options for half of Detroit’s population?
And there are. They’re just not fully realized.
Supermarkets are leaving many neighborhoods and regions in what’s often called a food vacuum. As grocery stores consolidate, leaving lower-income communities, food desertification increases.
It’s not a “natural” phenomenon, but a social and economic one. Hence — apartheid.
Studies show that the community buying power in food deserts is significantly higher than many grocery store owners believe it to be. As Christopher D. Cook explains in his book Diet for a Dead Planet grocery store flight is based on an unfounded fear and impression of low-income communities.
Deserts are naturally occurring, but the lack of food in certain communities throughout the US isn’t natural, explained Michele Simon author of Apetite for Profit. Instead, it’s a structural problem around the public and private allocation of food in this country.
As Beatriz Beckford said when talking to Why Hunger.org. “It is about a system of food apartheid in black and brown communities across the country like the Bronx NY, Jackson MS, and Baltimore MD where politically-sanctioned redlining restricts access to healthy food. It is about the Food Justice movement’s inability to name race and anti-blackness as the root of systemic food and land oppression, and further the food justice movement’s lack of a mass based strategy grounded in organizing and direct action.”
If we start to see food insecurity, (a change, and a decrease in food consumption) caused by our pre-existing policies and social constructs — we can begin to dismantle those, to lastingly increase individuals food security. Localizing our food sources, growing our own produce, strengthening the sharing economy, and supporting mobile produce stands are some such approaches neighborhoods and cities have used to take matters into their own hands.

What ideas do ending a desert/apartheid do you have? Thoughts on “apartheid” vs “desert”? Comment Below!

