Whats a food desert?
Think fast: How close do you live to your local grocery store? Most of us don’t know. As long as it’s close to home, it’s not a problem. But when you don’t have a local grocery store, or you have one but it’s too far away to get to without transportation, figuring out how you’ll buy your groceries becomes a big problem. For the past decade, Americans have driven an average of 6 miles (9 kilometers) between home and their closest grocery store. For rural Americans, especially those in the South, the trip can be much longer — for example, in the food landscape of the Lower Mississippi Delta, you’ll likely find one supermarket serving a 190.5-square-mile (493-square-kilometer) area. There, residents could expect to drive 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more from home to store [source: Hinrichs]. This phenomeno
