FOOD DESERTS
Growing To Give
Growing To Give is committed to creating food security in both urban and rural food deserts addressing food insecurity by cultivating community farms and gardens.
Having access to fresh, nutritious, and affordable food is an essential human right, yet it's an everyday challenge for millions of people living in the United States. Over 33 million people reside in food deserts — areas where supermarkets and other fresh, nutritious food sources is limited or non-existent. Typically located in low-income urban and rural regions, they have a disproportionate impact on communities of color, children, and the elderly.
Food deserts don’t just mean “a long drive to the store.” They often include neighborhoods where the nearest full-service grocer is miles away, where prices are higher at small corner stores, and where healthy choices compete with shelves dominated by ultra-processed snacks and sugary drinks. When fresh food is harder to reach, it becomes easier to rely on what’s close, quick, and cheap—creating a quiet but powerful cycle that affects health, opportunity, and quality of life.
And food deserts are rarely isolated problems. They overlap with housing costs, job access, education, public safety, and transportation. They can appear in dense cities where families may not own a car, and also in rural areas where distances are long and store closures can leave entire regions without a reliable grocery option.
A food desert is generally understood as a community where residents have limited access to affordable, nutritious food—especially fresh fruits, vegetables, and staple ingredients needed for balanced meals. But the lived experience is more personal than the definition: it can mean carrying groceries on a bus, choosing shelf-stable foods that last longer because fresh items spoil quickly, or skipping produce because it costs too much for the amount you get.
Over time, limited access contributes to higher rates of diet-related health issues like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. It also impacts kids in school: poor nutrition can affect concentration, energy, mood, and overall performance. Seniors are especially vulnerable when mobility challenges or fixed incomes make healthy food even harder to obtain consistently.
Food deserts emerge due to a complicated interplay of economic, social, and environmental elements. Factors such as lower profit margins, increased operational costs, and perceived security threats deter supermarkets and grocery stores from establishing themselves in lower-income neighborhoods. As a result, residents are left to fend for themselves at convenience stores and fast-food outlets, which sell less than nutritious food, to say the least. Additionally, challenges in transportation, be it the absence of public transit, personal automobiles, or bicycle facilities, can hinder a person’s ability to reach neighborhoods offering better grocery selections.
There’s also a structural issue hiding in plain sight: our food system can create abundance in one area and scarcity in another at the same time. Food waste happens throughout the chain—on farms, in warehouses, at retail, and in households—yet communities without adequate grocery infrastructure still can’t reliably access fresh food. Waste and scarcity are not opposites; they can exist side by side in the same system.
Market forces play a major role. Large grocers typically choose locations with predictable foot traffic, higher average spending, and lower logistical friction. Neighborhoods that have experienced decades of underinvestment may have fewer “signals” that corporate planners look for—despite the fact that families in those neighborhoods still need food every day. The result is a mismatch between human needs and business models.
In many communities, the challenge isn’t only the absence of grocery stores—it’s also the overwhelming presence of unhealthy options. This is sometimes described as a “food swamp,” where fast food and convenience stores are plentiful, but fresh, affordable produce is not. Food swamps can be just as damaging, because they make it easier to eat poorly and harder to eat well, even if calories are abundant.
When a neighborhood is both a food desert and a food swamp, the deck is stacked. Healthy food requires extra time, travel, money, and planning. Unhealthy food is immediate, heavily marketed, and everywhere. That imbalance shapes daily decisions, especially for busy parents, shift workers, and older adults.
Regrettably, the prevalence of food deserts in the United States is on the rise, a trend partially attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has further intensified the existing disparities in food accessibility. For example, supply chain disruptions, panic buying, and closures of food retail outlets have made it even harder for people living in food deserts to access healthy food.
Even after the most acute phase of the pandemic, many communities continued to feel the ripple effects: higher food prices, reduced store hours, limited staffing, and the long-term closure of retailers that never reopened. At the same time, extreme weather events—heat waves, storms, floods, and droughts—can interrupt supply chains, raise costs, and disproportionately impact the neighborhoods already least equipped to absorb price spikes.
The end result is that food insecurity becomes “normalized” for families who are doing everything they can—working, budgeting, and planning—yet still struggling to keep fresh, nutritious food on the table consistently.
There is no single solution to food deserts; the causes are complex and interrelated often influenced by two opposing forces; the need to make money and the need to eat nutritious food. However, several approaches have been proposed and some adopted, including:
Community gardens and farms: Initiatives driven by communities to cultivate fresh produce in both urban and rural settings can enhance access to nutritious food. Additionally, they can serve as platforms for learning, fostering social bonds, and promoting physical activity. By using space-efficient techniques like tomato volcanoes and water smart crop circle farms, communities can produce a large volume of fresh food in a small amount of space, making them a great solution for urban areas.
Community growing spaces also do something that a grocery store alone cannot: they rebuild local food confidence. When residents can see food growing, learn how to cook it, and share harvests with neighbors, food becomes more than a purchase—it becomes a skill, a culture, and a source of pride. These gardens can support youth programs, senior engagement, school partnerships, and volunteer networks that strengthen a neighborhood from the inside out.
Crop Circle Food Habitats: Engineered to grow food in a food desert, Growing To Give Food Habitats are “grow anywhere” food propagation systems that can operate on or off the grid, grow food with less resources, utilize small urban spaces, and provide live-in accommodation for workers.
These types of systems matter because they reduce the common barriers that stop local food from scaling: limited land, limited water, and limited staffing. When growing systems are designed to be resource-efficient and modular, they can be deployed in underused spaces—vacant lots, school grounds, churches, community centers, and even tight urban footprints—without needing massive infrastructure.
Mobile markets and delivery services: Mobile markets and delivery services can bring fresh food directly to residents in food deserts, bypassing the need for a physical store in the area.
These programs can be especially effective when they accept nutrition assistance benefits, offer culturally relevant foods, and maintain reliable schedules that residents can plan around. In some regions, partnerships with clinics, senior centers, and schools can help mobile markets reach the people who need them most.
Policy and advocacy: Advocating for policies that support healthy food access and promote equity can help to address the root causes of food deserts. For instance, enacting policies that offer incentives to supermarkets to establish themselves in underprivileged areas, allocating funds for transportation infrastructure enhancement to improve access, or boosting financial support for programs promoting healthy food can all contribute positively to addressing this issue.
Policy solutions work best when they combine multiple levers: incentives for retailers, zoning and land-use support for urban agriculture, investment in public transit access, and funding for community-led food initiatives. Importantly, communities should have a voice in shaping these solutions—because local context determines what will actually work on the ground.
In addition to community gardens and mobile markets, food banks also play a crucial role in the fight against food deserts. Food banks collect, store, and distribute food to those who have limited access to it or simply can’t afford it. These entities can often bridge the gap for those living in food deserts, providing fresh produce to those who would otherwise have limited access. Partnering with food producers, supermarkets, and both corporate and individual donors, food banks help ensure that surplus vegetables reach the dinner tables of those in need, rather than going to waste.
Increasingly, food banks are doing more than emergency response. Many now invest in “food as medicine” partnerships, nutrition education, and fresh produce distribution models that prioritize dignity and choice. When paired with local growing projects, food banks can help create a hybrid system—meeting urgent needs today while building long-term resilience for tomorrow.
Growing To Give, a nonprofit organization committed to creating food security in both urban and rural food deserts, is one of the organizations addressing food insecurity by cultivating community gardens and farms. Their space-efficient tomato volcanoes and water-savvy crop circle farms and gardens are intended to optimize food production in constrained spaces, which is proving to be an excellent solution for urban areas. By collaborating with community organizations and equipping volunteers with knowledge and resources, Growing To Give is aiding in broadening access to wholesome food while promoting social connection and community development.
Growing To Give, a nonprofit organization committed to creating food security in both urban and rural food deserts, is one of the organizations addressing food insecurity by cultivating community gardens and farms. Their space-efficient tomato volcanoes and water-smart crop circle farms and gardens are intended to optimize food production in constrained spaces, which is proving to be an excellent solution for urban areas. By collaborating with community organizations and equipping volunteers with knowledge and resources, Growing To Give is aiding in broadening access to wholesome food while promoting social connection and community development.
Ultimately, solving food deserts is about more than adding stores—it’s about restoring access, resilience, and local control. When communities have the tools to grow, distribute, and share healthy food, they move from vulnerability to strength. And when neighbors build food systems together, they don’t just change what’s on the table—they change what’s possible.
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