The following maps pertain to farmer's markets locations and food deserts both in the United States and Los Angeles. I have picked to relate all of my maps to this topic because I am very interested in Public Health Studies and believe by creating access to health food and lifestyles in impoverished regions we can improve the health of our country. I chose to specifically pinpoint Los Angeles because it is one of the most diverse cities in the country, and also one of the most racially and economically segregated regions of the world, making it a very interesting region for discussing issues of public health.
This map comes from the blog "Food Mapper" which discusses topics such as farmer's markets, local access to food, and health/nutrition news. This map depicts the location of all of the food deserts located within the United States. A food desert is an area, region or neighborhood with inadequate access to grocery stores, markets, and/or healthy, fresh food. As the map above shows, many of America's food deserts are located in the Western portion of the nation, occurring in areas where population is both scarce and booming. It should be noted that this map is from 2000, and in the past 10 years research has shown that the number of food deserts within the United States has grown both within the above areas and also expanded to major metropolitan areas along the coastlines. Ridding of food deserts, such as those shown on the map above, has become one of the main goals of Michelle Obama's current campaign "Let's Move", a program designed to bring healthy lifestyles and food to low-income, impoverished neighborhoods and schools.
One of the main ways Michelle Obama hopes to rid of food deserts in low-income, impoverished areas is through introducing farmer's markets to the qualifying neighborhoods. Los Angeles is a major metropolitian area home to people from varying class and income levels. It is also home to one of the largest farmer's markets systems in the country. The map above, from Google, pinpoints all of the farmer's markets within the major LA metropolitian area. Many of these farmer's markets are located within the city limits of Los Angeles, with a large cluster located in the downtown area. The downtown and closely surrounding regions of Los Angeles are considered some of the poorest areas in the city. Since many of the farmer's markets are located within the downtown region, one would think many of the people in these regions would have access to fresh, healthy food on a daily basis. However, this is not true, for Los Angeles' downtown region has many food deserts as well.
One of the main reasons pockets of downtown Los Angeles can be labeled food deserts despite the array of farmer's markets in the larger area is due to the distribution of market locations. Many of the farmer's markets are located in the central business district of downtown LA, an area full of white-collar workers and middle-class lifestyle. Many of the low-income impoverished neighborhoods, however, are located outside of the central downtown district. One of the poorest neighborhoods according to the Los Angeles Almanac, Southeast/South Central Los Angeles (shown in red on the map above), is deprived of any farmer's market within walking distance. If people in these areas can not walk to the market, many of them will not attend, for it will require both extra time and money (two assests most of the population in this neighborhood does not have) to take public transportation or cars to the central business district. This increased friction of distance between the poor and the farmer's markets thus creates a food desert within the poorer neighborhoods of Los Angeles despite the large farmer's market system.
