Newswise — For many people seeking healthy food choices, it's a desert out there.
With the proliferation of retail supercenters designed to draw consumers from several surrounding counties, residents of extremely rural areas often find themselves high and dry when it comes to grocery shopping, a social scientist at Mississippi State University has found.
"Supercenter locations actually become a disadvantage to rural, poor and disabled folks because shopping may involve a lengthy commute," said Troy C. Blanchard.
"Distance and transportation become limiting factors."
An assistant professor of sociology and a research fellow at MSU's Social Science Research Center, Blanchard uses the concept of "food desert" to describe the social impact of retail grocery location.
"In particular, I'm interested in the recent and ongoing spread of grocery supercenters throughout rural America," he explained. "The emergence of the supercenter as a low-cost food source has implications for small, locally owned grocery stores and for a large number of consumers."
Small retail outlets typically carry a limited selection of foods at a higher price, Blanchard said. If competitive pressures drive the smaller stores out of business, the "food desertification" phenomenon expands. In addition to influencing the structure of the grocery industry, "supercenter proliferation has significant implications for policy issues such as health and social services," he added.
Using U.S. Census data, he and rural sociologist Thomas A. Lyson of Cornell University identified large supercenter and retail grocery outlets—defined as employing more than 50—and developed maps showing populations outside a 10-mile radius of the stores. Their illustrations were completed with the help of geographic information systems software.
The study, which was presented last fall at a U.S. Department of Agriculture conference, was supported by the MSU-based Southern Rural Development Center, the SSRC's Rural Health, Safety and Security Institute and the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station.
"We chose 10 miles as a delineating distance based on National Transportation Survey data showing that the average U.S. resident traveled approximately eight miles during grocery shopping trips," Lyson said.
While "economy of scale" food retailing continues to grow throughout the U.S., the "food desert" concept—first coined by scientists in the U.K.—illustrates how "economically vulnerable segments of the population often have less, not more, choices," he said.
Among specific shopping realities the Blanchard-Lyson study revealed:—Residents of the American West have the least access to supermarkets and supercenters, followed by those in the South and Midwest;—In Mississippi alone, more than 440,000 people—15.5 percent of the state's population—live in areas considered "low access" ;—Persons living in counties with 10,000-plus cities are more likely to have shopping access than those living in counties with smaller cities; and—Access drops dramatically for counties without 2,500-resident cities and not adjacent to a major metropolitan area.
"In at least half of all non-metropolitan counties not located adjacent to a large city, no resident has ready access to a supermarket or supercenter," Blanchard said.
For that reason alone, Lyson observed, "Both government policymakers and representatives of social service organizations need to be aware of the burden these 'consumer desert' situations may place on them in the future."
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