“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.
World Food Summit, 1996
People without food security suffer hunger, diet-related illness and other related problems. They struggle to keep up with those who are food secure. Those unable to compete in school and for jobs and resources, may end up food insecure. It is a vicious cycle of food insecurity being both the cause and the symptom of structural inequalities. In an effort to break the cycle, food justice addresses the structural inequalities that are barriers to food security. A food desert is a structural inequality.
The USDA definition of a food desert is a low-income census tract with a substantial share of residents with low levels of access to healthy and affordable foods.
A census tract usually contains between 1,000 and 8,000 people. Census tracts qualify as food deserts if they meet these thresholds:
• Low-income: a poverty rate of 20 percent or greater, or a median family income at or below 80 percent of the statewide or metropolitan area median family income;
• Low-access: at least 500 persons and/or at least 33 percent of the population lives more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (10 miles, in the case of rural census tracts).
Supermarkets and large grocery stores containing all the major food departments are used as proxies for sources of healthy and affordable food. An estimated 13.5 million people in the United States have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store, with 82 percent living in urban areas.
Urban farms and community gardens address the issue of access to healthy, nutritious foods. They are often run by volunteers and their produce is usually available at no cost to those in need.