Major Grocer Locations Leave 'Food Desert' Holes

(MoneyWatch)  Wow. I just looked through a press release with the heading "Chicago Making Progress Shrinking Vast 'Food Desert.'" The city has reduced the size of its food deserts by 1.4 square miles, affecting 24,000 people. That seems like a pretty tiny improvement, considering that there are still 600,000 people in Chicago without easy access to healthy foods.

Food deserts -- places where cheap junk food is prevalent but things like fruits and veggies are scarce and overpriced -- have gotten a lot of attention is recent years, but no one's quite sure how to solve the problem yet.

Most food deserts are in neighborhoods that big grocers don't see as profitable. In rural areas, there's not a high enough population density for it to be worth opening a big store. And in urban food deserts, says David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, "there's typically a lower level of disposable income, which means you don't sell as much, which your margins will be tighter -- or zero."

But recent experiments have suggested that food deserts are full of potential customers. Skeptics have questioned whether people in certain demographics would choose veggies over chips and soda even if the veggies were free, but an experiment in New York City has shown that there is plenty of demand. The city has licensed mobile food carts to operate in food desert areas, and the carts have been a hit. New York is now working on getting these carts equipped to take food stamps.

The grocer Farmer's Best Market is trying its luck on Chicago's South Side, in a predominantly Latino neighborhood -- the owner believes Latinos tend to seek out fresh fruits and vegetables more than African Americans do. The store hasn't turned a profit yet, but it's still pretty new, and the economy isn't exactly peaking right now, so I wouldn't yet discount the strategy in the long-term.

Illinois has passed a bill allocating $10 million for the Illinois Fresh Food Fund, which would basically subsidize grocers who are willing to open stores in underserved neighborhoods, both urban and rural. Similar efforts in Pennsylvania have led to the opening of about 70 new supermarkets.

Tropicana just announced that it's donating a bunch of orange juice to the USDA's Summer Food Service Program and School Breakfast Program, but that strikes me as a publicity campaign that will benefit Tropicana more than it will actually help do anything about food deserts. Aside from that, my quick search didn't turn up anything about grocery chains or other food companies tackling the issue, but if anyone knows of any, I'd love to hear about it.