The Food Access Research Atlas presents a spatial overview of food access indicators for low-income and other census tracts using different measures of supermarket accessibility, provides food access data for populations within census tracts, and offers census-tract-level data on food access that can be downloaded for community planning or research purposes.This record was taken from the USDA Enterprise Data Inventory that feeds into the https://data.gov catalog. Data for this record includes the following resources: Interactive map GIS API Services Data file For complete information, please visit https://data.gov.

Dataset is an overview of food access indicators for low-income and other census tracts using different measures of supermarket accessibility. This dataset provides food access data for populations within census tracts; and offers census-tract-level data on food access that can be used for community planning or research purposes.Data from USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) Food Access Research Atlas, 2019. Last updated 4/27/2021.See also USDA map service at https://gisportal.ers.usda.gov/server/rest/services/FARA/FARA_2019/MapServer.

The programs replicate tables and figures from "Food Deserts and the Causes of Nutritional Inequality", by Allcott, Diamond, Dube, Handbury, Rahkovsky, and Schnell. Please see the file Replication Instructions for additional details.

Networks of public transit and food deserts. This dataset is not publicly accessible because: Data was never accessed by EPA authors. It can be accessed through the following means: Data is available on request from lead author, Dr. Anna Sisk at asisk9@alum.utk.edu. Format: spatial datasets. This dataset is associated with the following publication: Sisk, A., K. Rappazzo, T. Luben, and N. Fefferman. Connecting people to food: A network approach to alleviating food deserts. Journal of Transport & Health. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, 31: 101627, (2023).

Census Tract Data - Census 2000 This data layer represents Census 2000 demographic data derived from the PL94-171 redistricting files and SF3. Census geographic entities include blocks, blockgroups and tracts. Tiger line files are the source of the geometry representing the Census blocks. Attributes include total population counts, racial/ethnic, and poverty/income information. Racial/ethnic classifications are represented in units of blocks, blockgroups and tracts. Poverty and income data are represented in units of blockgroups and tracts. Percentages of each racial/ethnic group have been calculated from the population counts. Total Minority counts and percentages were compiled from each racial/ethnic non-white category. Categories compiled to create the Total Minority count includes the following: African American, Asian, American Indian, Pacific Islander, White Hispanic, Other and all mixed race categories. The percentage poverty attribute represents the percent of the population living at or below poverty level. The per capita income attribute represents the sum of all income within the geographic entity, divided by the total population of that entity. Special fields designed to be used for EJ analysis have been derived from the PL data and include the following: Percentage difference of block, blockgroup and total minority from the state and county averages, percentile rank for each percent total minority within state and county entities. Food Desert Locator Documenation The Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) Working Group defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. To qualify as low-income, census tracts must meet the Treasury Department's New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program eligibility criteria. Furthermore, to qualify as a food desert tract at least 33% of the tract's population (or a minimum of 500 people) must have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. Low access to a healty food retail outlet is defined as more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store in urban ares and as more than 10 miles in rural areas. The Food Desert Locator includes characteristics only for census tracts that qualify as food deserts. All store data come from the 2006 directory of stores, and all population and household data come from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing. For the 140 urban census tracts for which grid-level data are not available, all people in the tract are assumed to have low-access to a supermarket or large grocery store.

USDA_FoodAccessResearchAtlas2015_SCC

All data included in the Food Access Research Atlas are aggregated into an Excel spreadsheet for easy download. The Documentation section provides complete information on data sources and definitions. Note for GIS users: The Atlas is based on 2010 census tract polygons. To use the underlying Atlas data in GIS, the data from this spreadsheet needs to be joined to a census tract boundary file. With ESRI software, users should have access to the tract layer on ESRI's "Data and Maps" data distribution. For users of other software, tract boundaries can be downloaded directly from the Census Bureau's Cartographic Boundary Files. The underlying map services used in the Food Access Research Atlas are also available for both developers and GIS users.

This map shows areas within the City of Scranton defined as Food Deserts. It also shows the location of retailers within the City of Scranton that accept the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP.Food DesertsThe 2009 USDA report measures the distance to the nearest healthy-food retailer, using the locations of supermarkets and large grocery stores as a proxy, by referencing 1-square-kilometer grids for geographical analysis. These grids come from the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) and are based on information from the 2000 Census of Population (SEDAC, 2006). These population data (including socioeconomic and demographic data), which are released at the block group level, are first allocated to blocks and then allocated aerially down to roughly 1-square-kilometer grids across the Continental United States. For each grid cell, the distance from its geographic center to the nearest supermarket or large grocery store is used to measure access for people who live in that grid. Grids that are farther than a specified distance from the nearest supermarket or large grocery store are considered areas of low access, and low-access areas with a large percentage of low-income population are noted in particular. Use of the grid-level data provides two important benefits for the analysis: first, the data provide greater accuracy in estimating where people and households are located than data on larger geographic areas, such as census tracts; thus, they provide better precision in measuring distance to stores. Second, the process of allocating census data to 1-square-kilometer grid cells transforms the irregular shapes and sizes of census geographies or other geographies, such as ZIP Codes, into regular grid cells. While the 1-square-kilometer grid-based measures increase the precision in measuring where people are and how far they are from sources of healthy food and provide consistency in defining geographic areas across the country, the SEDAC grids are not widely used geographic units. Currently, no standardized nomenclature exists to identify a specific grid (as counties, ZIP Codes, or census tracts can be identified), and they cannot easily be linked to other geocoded data. For this reason, the area-based definition of a food desert uses the census tract as the geographic unit of analysis because it is more commonly used and has a standardized numbering system. Census tracts are subdivisions of a county, containing between 1,000 and 8,000 people and ideally encompassing a population of about 4,000. In order to establish a consistent definition for national comparison, we define food deserts as low-income tracts in which a substantial number or proportion of the population has low access to supermarkets or large grocery stores. Low-income tracts are characterized by either a poverty rate equal to or greater than 20 percent, or a median family income that is 80 percent or less of the metropolitan area’s median family income (for tracts in metropolitan areas) or the statewide median family income (for tracts in nonmetropolitan areas). This definition of low-income tracts is used to designate tracts that are eligible for the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program. Low access is characterized by at least 500 people and/or 33 percent of the tract population residing more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery in urban areas, and more than 10 miles in rural areas.SNAPSNAP authorized stores must meet one of two staple food requirements:Criterion A - staple food inventory; orCriterion B - staple food salesStaple foods are the basic foods that make up a significant portion of a person’s diet. They are usually prepared at home and eaten as a meal. They do not include prepared foods, heated foods, or accessory foods.Staple food categories:vegetables or fruitsdairy productsmeat, poultry, or fishbreads or cerealsCriterion AA store must have 3 stocking units of 3 different varieties for each staple food category on a continuous basis. For 2 staple food categories, there must be at least 1 perishable variety. Most stores are authorized under Criterion A.Criterion BA store must have more than 50 percent of its total gross retail sales from the sale of staple foods. Specialty stores, like butcher shops, are often authorized under Criterion B.Other Eligibility ConsiderationsFNS also takes other factors into account when determining the eligibility of your store. These are included but not limited to:Need for Access: Stores that do not meet Criterion A or Criterion B are still considered for authorization if they are in an area where SNAP clients have significantly limited access to food.Restaurants: Generally, SNAP does not allow participants to redeem benefits at restaurants. Your firm is considered a restaurant if more than 50% of your total gross retail sales come from sales of hot or cold prepared foods intended for immediate consumption. Only restaurants located in a State that operates the Restaurant Meals Program (RMP) State Option can participate in SNAP.Co-Location: When multiple firms operating at the same location meet certain elements, FNS will consider them a single firm when determining eligibility for SNAP authorization.

The food desert is a sector offering poor access to food stores (grocery stores, supermarkets and public markets), i.e. a distribution area (AD) in which residences are located on average more than 1 kilometer from a food store in urban areas and more than 16 kilometers in rural areas, and characterized by very high material deprivation (quintile 5). Accessibility to food stores is a quantitative measure used to assess the geographic ease of access with which individuals or populations can access food stores (grocery stores, supermarkets, and public markets) from where they live. For more information on the food desert index, you can consult * Identifying Food Deserts .This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).*

Contains a list of grocery stores which was used by the city to calculate the estimates of Chicagoans living in food deserts in 2011. Data in this file can be cross-referenced with the city's business license data (http://bit.ly/sMFZdN).

Data pulled from the USDA Food Research Atlas for 2019 Census Tracts designated as food deserts

LILATracts_1And10: Food deserts defined as low income and low access measured at 1 mile and 10 milesFor more definitions, read here.

Food deserts are areas without affordable access to healthy foods. This paper explores whether food deserts are present within urban areas of the Brazilian Amazon. The availability and price of a variety of food products was surveyed in a total of 304 shops, across 3 cities in 2015. Least-cost distances were calculated to estimate travel distance to access products, with map overlay used to help identify areas with poor access to a variety of healthy food - these were defined as food deserts.

Dataset

This dataset was created by Damon Narkiewicz

Contents

Percentage of total population within a designated area that is identified as both “low income” and having “low access” to healthy food. Low income is defined as Low income is defined as having an annual family income at or below 200 percent of the Federal poverty threshold. Low access is defined as population that is beyond 1 mile for urban areas or 10 miles for rural areas from a supermarket.

Note that there are many ways to measure food access for individuals and for neighborhoods, and many ways to define which areas are food deserts (neighborhoods that lack healthy food sources). Explore the USDA Food Access Research Atlas for more information: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/.

This is a simple proportion analysis to determine the number of veterans who may be impacted by food scarcity in the United states by county. The population of veterans in each county (9L_VetPop2016_County) was used with the total population in each county (DataDownload3.18) to determine the proportion of veterans in each county. We assumed that veterans were just as likely as anyone else to be in food scarcity and multiplied the proportion of veterans in each county by the number of low access people in the county to determine the number of food insecure veterans by county. We also used statewide very low food secure percentage as a conservative estimate of the number of veterans affected by food scarcity.This dataset was not created to be a perfect representation of the exact number of food insecure veterans. In fact, it is a very rough calculation. However, this back of the envelope calculation shows that the number of food insecure veterans is likely very high. Using county level food access we find that up to 3 million veterans could be affected by low food access, as a conservative estimate, we use the state level "very low food security percentage" and find that a minimum of 200 thousand veterans are likely food insecure. For calculations see sheet "Calculations" in DataDownload3.18.xlsVeteran Population in counties of the United States.(9L_VetPOP2016_Count.csv)https://va.gov/vetdata/Veteran_Population.aspFood Insecurity By County (DataDownload3.18.xls)https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-environment-atlas/data-access-and-documentation-downloads/

Contains a list of grocery stores which was used by the city to calculate the estimates of Chicagoans living in food deserts in 2011. Data in this file can be cross-referenced with the city's business license data (http://bit.ly/sMFZdN).

2015 USDA Food Desert areas for Florida defined by 2010 US Census tract. Based on LILATract_1And10 field census data. Developed by the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) as part of the Food Access Research Atlas.This service is intended for use with popups or at very large scales.This data layer is part of Florida’s Roadmap to Living Healthy web map produced by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), Division of Food, Nutrition and Wellness (DFNW).For technical assistance, contact the Florida's Roadmap to Healthy Living Administrator

The food desert is a sector offering poor access to food stores (grocery stores, supermarkets and public markets), i.e. a distribution area (AD) in which residences are located on average more than 1 kilometer from a food store in urban areas and more than 16 kilometers in rural areas, and characterized by very high material deprivation (quintile 5). Accessibility to food stores is a quantitative measure used to assess the geographic ease of access with which individuals or populations can access food stores (grocery stores, supermarkets, and public markets) from where they live. For more information on the food desert index, you can consult * Identifying Food Deserts .This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).*

This dataset displays information from the Food Desert task force questionnaire.