Food Desert - History of Food Deserts and Food Insecurity

History of Food Deserts and Food Insecurity

Food insecurity for specific low-income groups has existed in urban environments since the emergence of large concentrations of populations in urban settings, roughly at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century. The enclosure of the commons drastically reduced subsistence farming, hunting/gathering as survival strategies for low-income peasants. This, coupled with the development of large scale manufacturing, caused an influx of urban migration. In these urban areas, low-income groups were forced to rely on wage labour for survival. The new urban population had to rely on a limited amount of food transported from commercial farms, processed and then sold in small neighbourhood corner stores. The prices of this food, and the reduced amount of time workers had to buy and prepare food, limited their access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet.

The use of the term “food desert” began in the United Kingdom in the 1990s to describe the rapidly decreasing number of grocers in urban, low-income neighbourhoods after World War II. The development of suburbs during this period attracted the majority of the working middle class to move to these new areas, leaving behind urban neighbourhoods with significantly lower populations and higher proportions of lower-income groups. Suburbanization and increased rates of car ownership for the middle class, created an economic and social niche for big-box supermarkets. These supermarket chains offered wide varieties and high quantities of food merchandise in one location, allowing consumers to engage in one-stop shopping. This also allowed supermarkets to meet economies of scale at lower costs than the traditional corner stores and markets. New supermarkets were located in suburban areas, which were not only cheaper to build in than urban areas, but were also located near the stores’ targeted consumers. The suburban location of these supermarkets also meant that they were almost impossible to reach without a car.

Within low-income urban neighbourhoods, the traditional corner stores and markets have had difficulty competing with the low prices of fresh produce and meats from supermarkets. This has caused many small-scale neighbourhood food retailers to go out of business in the last half of the 20th century. With the loss of many of these corner stores, and the absence of supermarkets within the inner city, the urban neighbourhoods’ access to healthy, fresh food has diminished.

Although the concept “food desert” was first used in the U.K., it has been adopted by social geographers and public health researchers to describe similar situations in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. American research has expanded food desert research by focusing on rural communities’ limited access to fresh produce and meat.

Today, researchers agree that lower income groups’ accessibility to nutritious food is not simply limited by geographical locations of inner-city neighbourhoods and suburban grocery stores. It is also based on health and nutrition knowledge, the economic cost of nutritious food, the physical abilities of individuals, and car ownership. Understanding the multiple causes of limited accessibility has allowed for more multifaceted solutions.