Food Deserts

Mogro is a new for-profit company in New Mexico that is targeting neighborhoods with little access to healthy food with temperature-controlled grocery trucks.

The "food deserts" problem is receiving heightened attention following the release of the USDA's locator map. But this analysis relies on the suspect premise that suburban supermarkets are superior to small, walkable urban foodsellers.

James Griffioen debunks the myth that his hometown is in want of grocery stores.

The rural Midwest produces much of our nation's food supply, and yet small towns in the heartland and around America are increasingly and ironically becoming food deserts - places where citizens have little access to fresh, healthy foods.

With new fast food restaurants temporarily banned in South L.A. and few new sources of food coming into the area, one local architecture professor set his students loose to work on ideas for a small urban farm.

With suburban markets saturated, discount food chains are moving into urban food deserts. While this may be convenient for residents, some are concerned that such stores will do little for local economies.

A new report from The Los Angeles Food Policy Task Force calls for the government to take steps to increase accessibility to local, healthy food in urban areas.

Activists who want to solve the problem of "food deserts" in underserved areas push for co-ops and and independent grocery stores. But would large chains like WalMart be a better solution?

Online tools designed to connect local farmers with consumers are helping sustain the local food and urban agriculture movements.

Grist's food editor visits Detroit, where the lack of grocery stores has inspired a number of innovative, locally-grown food projects.

A proposed development on a vacant lot in ailing Cleveland could connect locals with a little-known asset of their community - a cluster of food wholesalers.

To survive, neighborhoods need to be commercially viable. A group called the Food Trust believes grocery stores are a good starting point for creating that economic climate.

A major grocer in Ohio is trying to keep some of its smaller stores open in areas that would otherwise be food deserts. But profits are hard to come by, and stores continue to move out of town.

Jewish groups in Los Angeles are taking on the lack of healthy groceries in certain parts of the city, the so-called "food deserts" of LA.

In the Bronx, Brooklyn, and even the Upper East Side, rooftop farming is making inroads. The City Greens profiles a handful of these urban pioneers.

A coalition of community groups in L.A. has banded together to address the lack of access to healthy food in sections of East and South Central Los Angeles.