Food Deserts Control in the United States

Introduction

Food deserts are geographical areas where people lack access to adequate nutrition owing to the distance from grocery shops and other economic issues. Fruits, whole grains, meat, dairy, vegetables, beans, peas, and fish are either costly or unavailable in food deserts. Urban food deserts, which are most commonly located in low-income neighborhoods, indicate a dysfunctional food system that creates a shocking amount of waste while keeping entire populations with little access to food. Several solutions are being tested to deliver healthy food into these deserts. The use of community development groups within the urban areas is one of the most effective solutions.

Development Goal

In order to control the issue of food deserts in different urban areas in the United States, the goal is to improve access to affordable fresh food products in highly impacted local neighborhoods. Using community development groups and state efforts have the ability to mitigate the consequences of food deserts and boost food access (Berkowitz et al., 2018). However, the activities involved should have a defined purpose, and have a process of decreasing and eliminating food deserts in urban areas.

Expanding geographic access via increasing sites of healthy food availability is one of the proposed techniques for achieving the aforementioned goal. Although more chain supermarkets have been recommended in food deserts, other proposed spatial solutions to create a healthy neighborhood with an accessible food environment include modifying the convenience stores (Allcott et al., 2019). These include expanding the number of farm stands and farmers’ markets as well as building community gardens and small retail outlets that generally provide a limited choice of core goods. Besides the initiatives to promote geographic access to nutritious foods, economical access methods will be employed (Karpyn et al., 2019). These approaches include price manipulation, which involves lowering the price of more nutritious foods while raising the price of less nutritious items at convenience shops, supermarkets, and farmers’ markets.

However, to achieve all the items on the list in the most effective way, community development groups will play a great part. Community-based solutions, such as local markets, government food assistance programs, surplus food sharing programs, community gardens, and food pantries, may be readily implemented through community development groups to enhance access to inexpensive, healthful foods in food deserts (Cantor et al., 2020). Food distribution, gardening, and locally organized markets form perfect community tools for increasing food access, promoting healthy diets and life choices, and reducing food insecurity.

Logic Model

Goal: To improve access to affordable fresh food products in the local communities

Stakeholder Analysis

The problem of access to healthy food has gained traction in recent years, attracting activists and stakeholders from all parts of society. Each one of these stakeholders contributes unique viewpoints, knowledge, and objectives to the project. Stakeholders in the food desert project include:

1. The United States Department of Agriculture
2. Government agencies
3. State employees
4. Sponsors
5. Community development groups
6. Grocery store owners Suppliers
7. Farmers
8. The general public
9. Health and safety groups.

It is critical for community development groups to learn the correct outreach tactics in order to collaborate with new stakeholders to achieve common objectives and goals. Involving a new set of stakeholders may be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Stakeholders can assist community development groups in understanding the larger context of the challenges and environment in which they operate. Community development groups can benefit by collaborating with partners to measure and accomplish each of these objectives (Allcott et al., 2019). Previous research has shown that it is not only required to deliver various forms of information to various stakeholders, but it is also vital to engage with stakeholders on various levels.

For example, it may be advantageous to narrow the time commitment required of these partners in order to bring in unexpected stakeholders to healthy food projects, including retail food executives. Having a varied collection of stakeholders helps to illustrate the work’s numerous advantages and broad reach; thus, meeting their demands within the constraints of the program or project becomes critical (Karpyn et al., 2019). Furthermore, stakeholders may discover and navigate interactions at the federal, state, and local levels to develop networks that assure the project’s success. To have access to these resources, community development groups must establish strategic connections with stakeholders. Community development groups can use these connections to expand the scope of their services and raise their profile in the private and public sectors.

The activities and extent of a community development group’s desired impact will determine stakeholder alliances. For example, establishing a new retail business in a given region will necessitate different partners than launching a countrywide healthy food financing project. Stakeholder partners involved include:

1. Partnerships for policy development: involve the national, state, and local government.
2. Partnerships for program management: this involves financing initiatives with a broad geographical reach. Stakeholders involved are sponsors, suppliers, farmers, and the United States Department of Agriculture.
3. Partnerships for project implementation: involves community members, community development groups, government agencies, government agencies, and health and safety groups.

Implementation

Stakeholder Meeting: The stakeholder meeting will include all parties who are directly or indirectly involved with the project. In the meeting, discussions will be made based on the problem’s nature, activities to be conducted, procedures to be followed, stakeholder collaborations, and the project funding process.

Information Collection: This phase will involve the collection of necessary data and information that will assist in handling the project. It involves identifying areas with problems and recording necessary solutions per area.

Media Campaign: This phase of the project will run for three months with the aim of providing the public with necessary and useful information about the ongoing project. This will help in generating more funding for the project, as well as pull sponsors and other stakeholders.

Distribution Planning: This phase involves planning for the locations where the project should be first launched. By using already gathered information, distribution planning can be done for two months.

Government Policies: After distribution planning has been finished, there will be a push to modify or create policies that will see the project prosper and achieve its final goal. Considering that government policies follow a given procedure, this phase can take about seven months.

Stores Transformation: Based on the new government policies, store transformation can then be launched. This process can last for five months, allowing store owners to make changes gradually to comply with the necessary policies on food products.

Establishment of Farmers’ Markets: During this process, the community development groups under the control of the United States Department of Agriculture will work in their respective communities to create a farmers’ market with favorable conditions that aim at achieving the project’s goal.

Establishment of Corner Stalls and Pantries: This phase of the project aims to create much closer access to healthy food products for the community members. During this phase, the community development groups will collaborate with willing community members and suppliers to create stalls and pantries within or next to residential areas.

Price Manipulation: Being the last implementation activity to accomplish, it is the major area that will create a greater impact when curbing the issue of food deserts. This phase will last for five months and will also involve government agencies, store owners, the U.S. department of agriculture, farmers, and community development groups coming together.

Project Evaluation: To evaluate the success of the project outcomes, different measures and questions can be asked. These include finding the total number of pantries, farmers’ markets, and store transformations made during the project duration. Another evaluation procedure will involve conducting a survey to determine whether households with low income get affordable and easy access to fresh, healthy products (Brace et al., 2020). The final evaluation, which will be used to determine the success of the project after five years, will involve a survey to find the number of people who have been affected by chronic diseases since the project was launched.

Consequences

More Resources and Expenditure: Supermarkets and grocery shops are significant neighborhood resources not just because they give access to nutritious and fresh food, but also because they provide a venue for stakeholders to connect with the local community. Establishing new stores in an easily accessible location both in urban and rural areas can mean a lot of funds and resources (Brace et al., 2020). Additionally, the implementation of a farmers’ market alongside pantries and corner stalls will also cost more. Considering that the whole project needs more funding and human resources to implement, the expenditure can go higher than expected. However, to avoid the problem of overspending, the achievement of project goals should be divided into chunks, and new phases should be started after the previous one is completed. Even though the expenditure will be higher, the final results will always remain with the community members and will not need more funding once accomplished.

Implementation Can Take More Time Than Expected: With government policies having been included within the implementation process, it can lead to a delay in the implementation process. There are procedures followed when drafting policies, and passing them can often take longer time to complete. To avoid this issue during the project implementation process, the community development groups should collaborate with government agencies as well as the local governments to help them in drafting procedures that would take shorter periods to pass.

Disagreement Between Stakeholders: While community development groups do not directly manage different stores, campaigns, nutrition education programs, or marketing, the owners may disagree with collaborating since collaboration might affect their profits. It is necessary for community development groups to stay aware of different initiatives and the partnership stakeholders within the project that need to be successfully planned and managed.

Conclusion

Food access is a major contributor to food deserts and is frequently viewed as a consequence of a number of factors such as physical closeness to food supplies, price, nutritional resource adequacy available, and cultural appropriateness. Low-income people who live in urban neighborhoods with limited healthy food access have worse diets and are more likely to develop chronic diseases. These underprivileged neighborhoods frequently have fewer food outlets selling nutritious foods and more food merchants selling less healthful meals. However, with a goal to improve access to affordable fresh food products in the United States’ urban areas, this issue can be controlled. This goal is important since, with improved access to affordable healthy food products, the rate of chronic diseases in urban areas can be reduced. To achieve this goal, a community development group is considered to be the most efficient and effective way to provide an approach. Community development groups will create more approaches at a time and this will create more chances for faster food desert control.

The food desert elimination project focuses on how community development groups may successfully collaborate with food system stakeholders to achieve these common aims and objectives. It is the obligation of community development groups to keep track of the prominent stakeholders in their target locations. It is critical in building links between community development groups in supporting healthy food companies and healthy food participants because these stakeholders have access to vital resources that community development groups require to succeed.

Once most of the project activities and objectives are completed, the city council would monitor the performances of different community development groups. To follow up and keep track, the city council will also create four annual meetings with different community development groups. Besides the city council taking control in overseeing continued performance, the implemented policies will also play a great role to ensure that all stakeholders follow the law and the project remains under control.

References

Allcott, H., Diamond, R., Dubé, J. P., Handbury, J., Rahkovsky, I., & Schnell, M. (2019). Food deserts and the causes of nutritional inequality. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 1793-1844. Web.

Berkowitz, S. A., Karter, A. J., Corbie-Smith, G., Seligman, H. K., Ackroyd, S. A., Barnard, L. S.,… & Wexler, D. J. (2018). Food insecurity, food “deserts,” and glycemic control in patients with diabetes: a longitudinal analysis. Diabetes care, 41(6), 1188-1195. Web.

Brace, A. M., Moore, T. W., & Matthews, T. L. (2020). The relationship between food deserts, farmers’ markets, and food assistance programs in Hawai ‘i Census Tracts. Hawai’i Journal of Health & Social Welfare, 79(2), 36. Web.

Cantor, J., Beckman, R., Collins, R. L., Dastidar, M. G., Richardson, A. S., & Dubowitz, T. (2020). SNAP participants improved food security and diet after a full-service supermarket opened in an urban food desert: Study examines impact grocery store opening had on food security and diet of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants living in an urban food desert. Health Affairs, 39(8), 1386-1394. Web.

Karpyn, A. E., Riser, D., Tracy, T., Wang, R., & Shen, Y. E. (2019). The changing landscape of food deserts. UNSCN nutrition, 44, 46. Web.