In March the Georgia Senate passed SR 283, which created a study committee tasked with studying the issue of food deserts in Georgia and coming up with ideas on how to limit them.
The Senate Improving Access to Healthy Foods and Ending Food Deserts Study Committee (not exactly acronym friendly) held four days of hearings in August, September, and October, and will make recommendations in the upcoming 2022 legislative session on how the General Assembly can best attack the issue.
For many readers, the idea of food deserts is likely a foreign one. Most people live just a short drive away from a grocery store. However in poor parts of the state – and not just those in rural areas by any means – access to fresh foods, particularly produce, are difficult to come by.
The US Department of Agriculture defines a food desert follows: “In urban areas, a food desert is an area where at least 500 people or 33% of the population must live more than 1 mile from the nearest large grocery store. Whereas in rural areas, at least 500 people or 33% of the people must live more than 10 miles from the nearest large grocery store.”
According to an AJC investigation, some 2 million Georgians, 20 percent of the state’s population, live in food deserts. Instead of grocery stores, they may have access only to gas stations and fast food restaurants, or at best low-end Dollar General type outlets that only carry the bare essentials. Many studies have been done correlating access to a healthy diet and overall physical health – particularly when it comes to children – and the results are exactly as you’d imagine: a lack of healthy food leads directly to health issues in the population.
The Senate study committee, chaired by Sen. Harold Jones (D-Augusta), heard from groups from around the country who have already been working to combat the issues caused by food deserts. One idea – increasing incentives for grocery stores, such as waiving building taxes, to lure them to low-income areas.
Officials from Atlanta and Augusta shared some of their success stories, such as the Atlanta Community Food Bank, which during COVID distributed more than 113 million pounds of food in 2020, and opened nearly 2,000 pop-up food pantries across North Georgia. Or Aglanta, the city’s public-private partnership that promotes urban agriculture incentives with the goal of ensuring that 85 percent of Atlanta residents are within a half mile of fresh, affordable food by 2022.
It’s a complicated issue, and one that affects urban and rural communities very differently. And confronting it has bipartisan support – the study committee includes Democrat and Republican Senators who agree that the state must do more to ensure that all Georgians have access to healthy food options. As the committee digests what they learned over the fall ahead of the 2022 session, expect tangible legislation addressing food deserts to drop early next year. Stay tuned.
