By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate

Earlier this year, I wrote a post on a few initiatives and incentives programs aimed at attracting fresher, healthier grocery options into neighborhoods and areas known as “food deserts.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food deserts as “areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food.” Since February, we have seen a number of new financing and analysis efforts emerge in identifying and eliminating food deserts, including the federal government’s $400 million Healthy Food Financing Initiative (PDF), and the USDA’s Food Environment Atlas, and PolicyLink’s Grocery Gap report and toolkit, among others.

One of the critical challenges in developing nutrition options in food deserts is avoiding the pratfalls of market forces on retail demand. While needs can easily be identified, actual demand (or lack thereof) often surprises well-meaning policymakers. The City of Tulsa heavily incentivized a locally-owned supermarket to open in its underserved North Tulsa neighborhoods, only to see the store struggle and nearly close as sales declined just two months after its opening. As one of the largest grocery stores in the city, even in an area where it is the only store for miles and with a $2.2 Community Development Block Grant, the market can still barely survive.

The City of Baltimore has tried avoiding this issue in launching its health department’s Virtual Supermarket Project. Groceries can be ordered online and two days later picked up at public libraries located in two underserved neighborhoods. The virtual grocery store accepts cash, checks, cards, and food stamps.

The Virtual Supermarket definitely lacks the convenience of an actual market open all day, seven days a week – participants in the program must order groceries on a certain day, in a certain window of time, at a certain library, and then two days later have a one-hour window in which to retrieve their food at the library. The program lacks the ease of being able to stroll into a physical space and pick out items for that evening’s meal. For working families, the program’s logistics could be a hurdle, but the opportunity is significantly better than the alternative – which is no healthy option at all. This smaller scale of planting choices in a food desert is also far more sustainable and less risky than filling an independently-owned 57,000 square feet store with food.

Baltimore’s Food Policy Task Force’s recent recommendations and report (PDF) indicate that the city is looking to expand its “gardening” in food desert neighborhoods and find effective ways to promote nutritious food choices. The report is a great resource of case studies and best practices of activities and financing programs throughout the nation, as well as an analysis of the pros and cons of recent controversial healthy food initiatives that have made the news, such as menu labeling legislation and South L.A.’s temporary moratorium on new fast food restaurants.

Food and nutrition policy is going to experience a lot of trial and error in the coming years as cities and organizations figure out how to encourage good nutrition and prevent the epidemic-caliber health problems that threaten economic growth and productivity, all while still leaving it up to citizens to make choices for themselves and their families. Additionally, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition programs – the aggressive policies we’re watching develop in New York City and San Francisco (both largely food oases) are a far cry from what will work for food deserts in rural Appalachia or the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, areas with entirely different needs and expectations in accessing food and curbing chronic illnesses related to poor nutrition. While some cities  ban salt and high fructose corn syrup, others are just trying to set up farmers markets to accept debit cards and food stamps, or trying to attract a Walmart with a produce department to their county. For the near future, most American communities will require strategic program-based solutions rather than sweeping policies to make something grow and thrive in their food deserts.