It’s useful in an environmental sense, or at least until we have efficient drones delivering our food, because if you are in a walkable or at least very closely drivable neighborhood, shopping for food becomes more efficient carbon-wise, and infrastructure-wise.
Of course, the sense of "on average people who live here have a hard time getting easy access to fresh food " serves a purpose as well.
There is conflation of poverty (and correlated with vehicle availability) and distance from supermarkets. This makes some sense but only in certain circumstances, depending what you want to do. I agree fighting poverty is an important goal.
In any case, 0.5 miles is not an overwhelming distance. I walked four times that distance to my high school - four times a day if I went home for lunch. Carrying groceries makes it harder, of course, but for a definition implying hardship I might have used a bigger number. It is worth correcting poverty, but maybe also distinguishing it from first world problems.
In some cases, no amount of systemic poverty remediation would actually make a supermarket in whatever distance economical. That would assume that there’s some critical mass of consumers within that distance that would make it economical to open a new store within that radius, which is likely not the case.
What that systemic poverty remediation might do is broaden people’s access by giving them the means to drive a car, which would render a lot of food deserts null and void instantly.
But in other areas, such as rural small towns, there just aren’t enough people in that particular area to support a supermarket within whatever that radius is. Case in point- a little part of Kansas that I drove through last summer. The towns in this area are like 150 people and below, and it’s all farm fields otherwise. But it’s listed as a food desert. Short of mass immigration, the people who live in Webber, Burr Oak and Esbon Kansas are going to have to drive to somewhere else larger for the grocery store.
No, you have shown that the definition used by the USDA specifies a geographical area, and that’s the definition I’ve been using, and their maps are the ones I’ve looked at to see ‘food desert’ areas. You seem to think that the page you linked to says something other than it does, because it very clearly refers to food deserts as areas on a map.
I have no idea why you’d use the term ‘desert’, which describes a geographical area, if you’re not basing the definition on geography.
You appear to be using some sort of fuzzy metaphysical definition where a ‘food desert’ can be one person because they’re too broke to buy food, and therefore wherever they live is a food desert. I’m using the USDA’s definition and looking at their maps. You haven’t provided any cites supporting your contention that ‘organizations who make this sort of thing their business’ use the metaphysical definition you do. If we’re not talking about a geographical term, then we’re not talking about a term that applies to areas, and I have no idea why you’d use the term ‘desert’. I have been discussing the USDA’s metrics all along and using their map of areas that are alleged to be ‘food deserts’, you’re the one who’s not using the metrics and considerations that the organization who makes this sort of thing their business does.
Excuse me - perhaps it would be better to say “solely on geographical proximity to a supermarket.” Would that be better for you?
Metrics the USDA site uses as useful indicators are:
"Accessibility to sources of healthy food, as measured by distance to a store or by the number of stores in an area.
Individual-level resources that may affect accessibility, such as family income or vehicle availability.
Neighborhood-level indicators of resources, such as the average income of the neighborhood and the availability of public transportation."
No. I live in London. I have >five supermarkets within a ten minute walk of my house, one of which is a very large one.
In the UK I suspect the only areas that are “food deserts” are unusually remote. There probably are some rural villages that are ten miles from a supermarket and only have a corner shop or a Budgens, which doesn’t really count as a supermarket. I doubt there are huge numbers of such places, but there will be some.
It takes longer to travel ten miles in rural UK than it does in rural US (tiny winding roads will be at least part of the journey), and those areas often have desultory public transport, so the physical difficulty of getting the food could be harder than the miles might indicate.
But there won’t be any in a UK city, really. It’s just not likely you’d have to travel a mile to get to a supermarket, and there are still tons of outdoor markets selling fresh veg (they’re not usually open every day, and they do have short opening hours, so TBF that limits their usefulness). For disabled people it can be difficult, but able-bodied people can manage. Grocery deliveries are also easy for people in cities and, from my anecdotal experience, are way more common than in the US.