Food Deserts and Food Security

The global population has reached a precipice that demands an increase in food production. It has done so since the turn of the century. Unfortunately, we have not met the needs of everyone in rural and urban areas with fresh food security at this point in history. We are now in a position to have to rise to that challenge with a dwindling amount of viable land where agriculture can be performed with finite resources to do so, we must think about a different approach to our securing our agricultural production and strengthening our fragile supply chain.

It is critically apparent that in order to meet the challenges of the future in terms of food security, food safety, and environmental sustainability, radical changes are required throughout all levels of the global food system and those changes must be matched with radical food transparency.

Food Deserts and Food Insecurity

Food Deserts

There are over 6,500 food deserts in the U.S. These are places where economics and geography make it harder for people to access healthy, nutritious food. Food deserts are communities that have poor access to healthy, affordable foods. ?In food deserts, fresh and healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, peas, beans, meat, and fish are often expensive or unobtainable. The lack of access to healthy foods in these communities translates to health disparities and high rates of chronic disease.

The causes of food deserts are multifaceted and have been built over time. Public policy and economic practices that are embedded into cultures without consequence often play a role. Social, economic, and political conditions have been shown to reduce people’s access to healthy foods as well as lack of education. Contributing factors include food insecurity, social determinants of health, racial residential segregation, and poor access to transportation among low-income and historically marginalized populations.

Food Insecurity

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) estimates that 17.4 million American households were food insecure in 2014. Austin, Texas, and its food insecurity is illustrated by the Atlas mapping in Figure 1 below.

Food security is always the physical and economic access to sufficient nutritious foods by all people. When this access is disrupted or limited, food insecurity occurs. Food insecurity may be temporary — for example, if you run out of food for a day or two — or long-term, as exemplified by persistent poverty and poor access to food.

Food insecurity among low-income communities in food deserts is 2.5 times greater than the national average.

Future Food Security

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) (a.k.a. indoor farming) has an advantage over conventional farming methods in that production processes can be largely separated from the natural environment; thus, production is less reliant on environmental conditions, and pollution can be better restricted and controlled. While the output potential of conventional farming at a global scale is predicted to suffer due to the effects of climate change, technological advancements at this time will drastically improve both the economic and environmental performance of CEA systems. This article summarizes the current understanding and gaps in knowledge surrounding the environmental sustainability of CEA systems and assesses whether these systems may allow for intensive and fully sustainable agriculture at a global scale.?

The global food system accounts for 38% of global land surface cover and that amount of land is fading quickly due to the increased population pressure of developing countries. Agriculture is recognized to be the primary driver of global biodiversity loss due to human activities such as land use change, pesticide use, and pollution. One startling fact is that conventional agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of global freshwater withdrawals globally, on top of water consumption after rainfall and evapotranspiration. Taking all these impacts into account it is clear that, in order to meet the challenges of the future in terms of food security and environmental sustainability, radical changes are required throughout all levels of the global food system, including production, land use, and supply chain stages.

There is going to have to be a multifaceted approach to help realize this radical change, and one potential option to meet future food demand in a more sustainable way, is the application of controlled environment agriculture (CEA) systems. CEA systems cover a range of production methods and are defined by the ability to control the environment in which crops are grown and specialize in the crops being grown to tune in the utmost efficiency. This means that crops are typically grown within some form of fabricated structure, i.e., “indoor agriculture.” Indoor agriculture includes cultivation within a glasshouse or plastic structure (any structure that can be controlled by external environmental factors) with a single layer of crops exposed to direct sunlight, or within multiple vertical stacked racks under artificial lighting with nutrient solutions delivered via automated systems (e.g., vertical farming). As well as traditional crop production, other common food production methods such as mushroom, insect, and fish farming (aquaculture and aquaponics) are also typically carried out in CEA systems (indoor controlled environments). And while it is still in its infancy, and I am not exactly a proponent for it, lab-grown meat methods may also fall into the category of CEA as a food production industry that operates in a synthetic environment, with a large degree of separation from nature. I believe that that should be a last resort for a zero-footprint option but regenerative livestock raising is also in its infancy.

One major beneficial environmental factor of certain CEA systems is that the systems are “closed;” meaning that they are less susceptible to external factors such as fluctuations in precipitation and temperature, and resilience to environmental stressors is increased. Exposure to the spread of pests (i.e., insects and disease) is also decreased, thus pesticide use, and resultant environmental exposure to pesticides are both radically lower than conventional agriculture systems. Nutrients in these systems also have the potential to be controlled and recirculated, particularly where hydroponic and aeroponic systems are used, thus nutrient use efficiency can be increased and losses into the natural environment can be negated almost completely, significantly reducing phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) pollution. However, CEA systems are more complex than this vision may suggest, are more capital intensive, and their scaling-up is currently hampered by the limitations of technology, economics, and societal factors. Other options could include more localized CSA CEA models with small-scale operations operating with a smaller footprint to rethink the old farmers' market model for urbanized communities. (I am currently thinking of that model now and let me tell you it consists of participation by suburban areas and the consumer themselves!).

CEA systems have a wide array of advantages and disadvantages associated with their use, both in terms of economic and environmental sustainability. While CEA systems such as glasshouse production or vertical farming are expanding rapidly in competition with conventional farming for some food types (predominantly salad crops), the majority of food production, primarily staple crops, and meat, will remain economically unfeasible in these systems for the foreseeable future.