Food Deserts

Dr. Carola Grebitus, an agribusiness professor at Arizona State University, is researching challenges that exist in expanding the urban farming movement. "Our project is based at Arizona State University in Phoenix and Phoenix has a lot of open lots so the collaborators, the mathematicians and geographers have made a map where in Phoenix, we would have vacant lots that could be used for urban farming and we just started working on creating a second map, where we match the food deserts with those vacant lots that could be used for urban farming. What is a food desert? The USDA's definition is that it is an area where, if you lived in that area, you would not have access to grocery stores. Sometimes it is just the gas station store. Probably we could use urban farms but if the farms are too far away from where the food deserts are, most of the time when we think of food desert, there might be people living there that do not have transportation to actually go to where the farm is. This is even though they could get produce cheaper there or even for free depending on what type of firearm it is. There is a map out there where you can see where these deserts are located."