Trent Sherrell's List: Food Deserts

• Jan 13, 2012
• there’s not a lot of consistency in these measurements across cities.
• it became clear that the context of communities had an important impact on which neighborhoods had low access to food.
• While food deserts may be more of a reality in cities in the Eastern U.S. where poverty is more concentrated, cities in the West have more suburbanized poverty. She argues that these aren’t food deserts, but food hinterlands. The issue, Leete says, is not just areas with few grocery stores, but the scattered low-income people who live too far from grocery stores and have few options to get to them.
• “The policy solutions break down into space-based solutions versus transit-based solutions: bringing the stuff to the people or bringing the people to the stuff,” says Leete. “And the hinterland idea suggests that maybe we need to bring the people to the stuff.”
• “Food desert people are usually trying to get grocery stores and farmers markets into the food desert. For this really spatially dispersed problem, the policy solutions are probably different and have more to do with transit than with actually locating grocery stores.”

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• 3rd Quarter, 2012
• Essentially, the food deserts concept links supply of nutritious food, and the availability of food outlets providing it, to the cost low-income consumers face in obtaining it.
• Not much attention has been given to establish an economic framework that could justify food deserts’ existence. The two most relevant examples are chapter 5 of the 2009 USDA report to Congress on the issue—which summarizes some of the concepts also illustrated here—and Bitler and Haider (2011).  This article illustrates the role played by different demand and supply drivers of retail location which could contribute to the emergence of food deserts, and how different economic frameworks can explain their existence.

  • This might be an opportunity: "Not much attention has been given to establish an economic framework that could justify food deserts' existence." If a data model could be created that would be able to trend and allow for the predictoin of food deserts - or show how to reduce by changing various influences - that might be something of value.
• find food deserts more likely in areas with declining or aging population.
• the possibility of accessing support programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) could represent alternative sources of income for poorer households and a source of demand which could appeal to some food stores.
• areas with similar poverty rates but with more effective assistance programs may be less likely to become a food desert
• the quality of the food products offered may improve for those stores benefiting from program participation: for example a case study found WIC approved small stores to have adapted the level of “healthfulness” of the products offered in response to changes in program requirements
• Therefore, logistics and distribution play pivotal roles in the activities of a food retailer (particularly in the case of perishable goods). These costs can become prohibitive in areas where transportation infrastructures (for example road conditions, presence of highways, etc.) are poor, or where retailers need to build new logistics structures (i.e. excessive distance from pre-existing distribution centers).

  • Can factors like these be aquired through government open data?
• Other factors impacting food store location decision are local/state-level tax regimes, zoning laws, retail image, crime rates, presence of public transportation and others, whose detailed discussion are beyond the scope of this article. 

  • These factors are definately available from open government data sources.
• This section discusses how different economic frameworks can explain how food deserts can be one of the possible outcomes of the interaction of demand and supply factors—an equilibrium outcome.
• in this framework, the food desert phenomenon is driven primarily by a shrinking market size; under the assumption of no barriers of store entry and exit, fewer and fewer stores will operate in a market as demand shrinks.

  • This is the "perfect competition" model.
• “entry threshold crossing” model presented by Bresnahan and Reiss (1991).  The entry decision for each food retailer takes place considering whether its expected future variable profit, proportional to the size of the market, exceeds the fixed costs needed to enter and operate.
• the difference between short-term profitability and fixed cost determines the likelihood of observing entry.
• scenario where food retailers’ decisions follow a three-stage process: first, stores decide whether or not to operate in a market; then, those which have entered the market set the level of quality—assortment and level of service—offered to consumers; last, they compete with one another.
• this framework treats the level of investment as a choice variable
• leads food retailers to separate “naturally” into two different groups: one made of “low-quality” small stores, such as some small independents and convenience stores; and one made by larger “high-quality” ones, such as supermarkets and supercenters, needing more investments to provide the quality that some consumers demand
• two features of the market that allow for the absence of “high-quality” food stores are a very high cost of quality investment—for example, a prohibitively high price of land—and/or extremely small market size (result obtained manipulating some of the formulas in Ellickson (2006, 2007)). In other words, according to this economic model, variable retailing costs no longer plays a role in observing areas with limited food access.
• several demand and supply factors may play a role in the creation of food deserts.
• Interpreting food deserts as resulting from market failures may not be accurate.
• Across all frameworks, and as economic intuition suggests, the lack of market potential, or the small market size, is one of the most important determinants for food store location.  Issues related to structural economic problems—for example, lack of employment opportunities resulting in high unemployment and/or poverty rates—may explain shrinking markets which can be a combined result of migration, aging population etc.

  • These stats are definately within government data.
• However, the effectiveness of initiatives that help the existing low-income population acquire food, such as SNAP and WIC programs, might provide enough market demand to attract more and/or better quality stores.

  • What if there was an app that took all the variables creating food deserts (at least those available via data) and allowed users to apply different programs (or set up for programs) like SNAP and WIC. The resulting display could show how changing different variables within the programs (amount of money back, restrictions, date/time for use, etc.) would affect the food desert information.
• Flexible financing programs releasing funds, either in the form of grants or low-interest loans, to cover different types of investment costs needed to bring food stores into underserved low-income areas may prove effective to help curb the issue. One example of such flexible financing programs is the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative which allows funds’ requests for different uses, such as feasibility studies, construction grants, infrastructure improvements, security improvements, and personnel training.

  • More examples of government funded help.

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• If you ever need to research any city, zip code, or neighborhood for any reason, from considering a move there to just checking where somebody you know is staying, this is the site for you.

• 3rd Quarter, 2012
• Detroit, Michigan is one of the most severe food deserts in the United States in terms of size and duration.
• There is a debate about whether food deserts emerge because consumers do not purchase healthy foods, or whether the limited availability of healthy food determines consumer purchasing patterns.
• Most inner-city Detroit residents rely on convenience, liquor, or other nonmainstream grocery stores for food (Gallagher, 2007). These “fringe retailers” focus on high-calorie, high-fat and/or salty snack foods and sugary drinks, and are located on average 0.2 miles from households. However, mainstream grocers, including small independent grocers, are on average two to three times that distance (Gallagher, 2007) and in food desert neighborhoods can be substantially farther.
• 49% of those surveyed in our target population did not own a vehicle.
• Peaches & Greens operates a small produce store that sells only FFV and limited refrigerated items such as milk, water and so on; and a truck that sells FFV in the streets similar to how an ice cream truck would circle a neighborhood.
• data from Peaches & Greens cash-register data, national scanner data from Nielsen representing national fruit and vegetable purchasing habits, and published community food security data

  • Data sources.
• These findings have major implications for the effectiveness of price based programs to influence consumers to purchase more FFV in a food desert. An effective program would have to heavily subsidize the price to attain a large increase in the consumption of fruit but may not be effective with vegetables.
• For every one percent increase in expenditure on fruit and vegetables, there will be more than a one percent increase in dollars spent on  bananas, apples, oranges, tomatoes, and peppers, making them luxury fruits and vegetables in this community.
• substantial gains in FFV consumption could be achieved with increased income.
• there are ways for food policy to deal with FFV expenditure. In particular, the Double-Up Bucks program in Michigan provides coupons worth up to $20 that can be redeemed only for FFV at specified retailers and only on a matching basis: for example, for a $2 purchase the consumer would pay $1 and the coupon would match that $1. This program essentially doubles the amount of income available for FFV purchases.

  • This is a government program which could work into the contest/innovation idea.

• Thus, it appears that the Double-Up Bucks program had an important impact in this inner-city community, and it seems reasonable that other programs with meaningful income effects would also have impact—the Double-Up Bucks dummy was not significant in the model.

   

  This raises the policy question: what other factors constrain healthy eating and can food policy help to significantly reduce these constraints?
• The majority of respondents had not been to the store yet—3.7% indicated Peaches & Greens as their primary shopping location, 5% as their secondary shopping location, 1.2% as their tertiary shopping location and 90% never shopped at Peaches & Greens—suggesting that increased knowledge of local food options may be an important policy target.

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• February 18, 2013
• The hottest trend in the grocery business might just be setting up shop in food deserts.
• Co-CEO John Mackey, speaking recently at the Economic Club of Chicago, says Whole Foods is creating a foundation, Whole Cities, to open subsidized stores in Chicago neighborhoods that lack access to fresh food as soon as this year. Other cities in Whole Foods' pilot tests are New Orleans and Newark, N.J.
• Because the locations won't have to make money, the Austin, Texas-based grocer could write them off “as a give-back while at the same time gaining important community insights,”

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• May 6, 2012 11:00 PM CT
• After vowing to open more than 1,000 stores selling fresh fruit and vegetables in underserved urban neighborhoods, or “food deserts,” grocers have opened a fraction of them, putting in jeopardy Michelle Obama’s effort to improve food choices for low-income Americans.

  • Broken promises and Michelle Obama's project being put in jeopardy equals opportunity to be listened to and supported by the government.
• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which said last July it would have 300 food-desert stores nationwide by 2016, has opened 23 and delayed opening some locations after a backlash from activists.
• Supervalu Inc. (SVU), which pledged to double to 2,376 its Save-A-Lot stores, has slowed the pace of openings amid declining sales and scarce financing for its licensees. Meanwhile, grocers are opening stores in wealthier urban enclaves.

• Food desert locations, by definition, aren’t profitable, according to Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
• “It’s not the weather -- it’s because people don’t have any money.”
• Shoppers who live in low-income city neighborhoods “don’t fill up a basket and spend $100, they buy $10,”

  • This is a good point. What large (chain) grocery store is going to want to open a location where the population can't afford to purchase enough to support the store's overhead?
• The First Lady has made the eradication of food deserts a central part of her anti-obesity “Let’s Move!” campaign. About 23.5 million Americans live in low-income areas that are more than 1 mile from a supermarket, according to Obama’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
• Her calls for more grocery stores selling fresh fruit and vegetables come as grocers seek new ways to grow. Sales at U.S. supermarket and grocery stores, which totaled about $495 billion last year, have stagnated and will grow 0.1 percent annually until 2016

  • Grocery store chains are in a tough spot now as well. There needs to be a win for them in order for a food desert initiative to take hold and be successful if the solution involves grocery stores.
• As part of its effort to persuade Chicago officials to let it open stores in the third-largest U.S. city, Wal-Mart in June, 2010, vowed to open “several dozen stores” to “help eradicate food deserts and stimulate local economic development.”

  • So, in order to get Chicago officials to back Wal-Mart, it promised to help with the food desert situation yet, now that Wal-Mart is in Chicago, it has not followed up on that promise. Opening only four in Chicago and working to open more in areas with better money than the low income food deserts.
• In January 2010, Save-A-Lot’s then President Bill Shaner vowed to double the number of locations by 2015 by tapping into under-served demand in “urban food-desert” centers.
• It may be easier for Walgreen Co. (WAG), the second-biggest U.S. drugstore chain by revenue, to live up to its food-desert promises because it already has the locations, according to Meredith Adler, a New York-based analyst at Barclays Capital. The drugstore is “already in food deserts -- they’re just going to be shifting space around in their stores to sell more food.”

  • Being that Walgreens is a Chicago-land company, the Obamas are from Chicago, we are in Chicago - this might have potential for some sort of partnership or level of support.
• The Deerfield, Illinois-based company’s “urban oasis” project includes stores that carry about 750 more food items, including fresh fruits and vegetables.

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  • Feb 20, 2013
• The United States Department of Agriculture measures them this way: A Census tract is considered a food desert if it meets a certain threshold of poverty, and if at least 500 people or one-third of the population reside more than a mile from a large grocery store.

• This definition assumes that people only access supermarkets within a fixed – and arbitrary – radius of their home. And it sidesteps the reality that many people ride transit or cars to get there.

   

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