O‘ahu Food Access

Exploring local food security through access to affordable, healthy food across our island

Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency

Traditionally, we think of food security as made up of three elements: availability, access, and utilization.

These elements relate to different scales of food security. For instance, when talking about availability, we are usually talking about large-scale food security, referring to a community's overall supply of food through both local food production and imported food. On the other end of the scale is utilization, which refers to things such as how much food one single person eats, and how good their body is at converting that food into energy.

Between availability (large-scale) and utilization (small-scale) is access. When talking about food access, we are referring to a family or household's ability to get food, whether through buying it in a grocery store (as is most common), growing their own in gardens or backyard farming, or even by being gifted food or visiting a food pantry.

The maps below explore the landscape of food access across our island, with a focus on access to healthy, affordable food.

SNAP, EBT, and WIC

One of the most common ways for a family to get food is by buying it from a grocery store. However, not all families or households have the same ability to buy food, reflecting differences in purchasing power. In fact, as of 2017, about  87,000 individuals and families  were enrolled in the federal food assistance program known as Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP. SNAP recipients receive electronic benefits transfer cards (EBT), which they can use to buy food and other household essentials.

Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, is another federal food assistance program which helps lower food costs for low-income infants, children up to age 5, and women who are pregnant or who have recently given birth.

The map on the right shows the location of all retail locations (grocery stores, convenience stores, etc) that accept EBT or participate in WIC. This is a great way to start visualizing affordable food access in our island community.

Local Food Access

Here, farmers' markets and DA BUX Double Up Food Bucks retail locations are used as proxy indicators for local food access.  DA BUX  is a program that helps make locally-grown food more accessible to low-income households by matching EBT dollars spent on local produce 1 to 1 at participating retailers. While DA BUX specifically targets local produce, farmers' market vendors may or may not sell local food. And in terms of affordability, you can find out information about what farmers' markets accept EBT by clicking on each data point. Locations that accept EBT make local produce more accessible to low-income households.

Local food access can also be considered a rough proxy indicator for healthy food access, as the food sold through farmers' markets and the Da Bux program is often fresh produce. However, this is not always the case. For instance, farmers' markets may sell prepared foods from local retailers and restaurants that ranges from healthy food (like locally-grown greens) to unhealthy food (like fried egg rolls).

Food Distribution

Outside of the marketplace, a common way for households to access food is through food distribution. Food distribution includes all types of no-cost distribution that helps families remain food secure, including: food banks and pantries; mass food distribution; prepared meal distribution, and summer meals for keiki.

Food distribution, also known as emergency food assistance, is crucial to our understanding of affordable food access across our island. It is an important way families with less purchasing power- less disposable income- to meet their food needs.

Land Access

Here, community gardens and school gardens are used as proxy indicators for a household's potential to access food through its own production- i.e. by growing its own food.

The relationship between food access and land access is particularly important here in Hawai‘i due to cultural practices such as aloha ‘āina (love of the land) and mālama ‘āina ʻāina (caring for and nurturing the land, as well as the belief that the health of the people of the people can be measured through the health of the land and its abundance). These values relate not just to food access and security but also sustainability. 

Land access can not only help a household gain food access, but it can also help the community at large by providing a pathway to self-determination, reclaiming and revitalizing traditional knowledge, and democratize ownership of food systems- ultimately helping to foster a more just and sovereign sustainable local food system.

When thinking about the landscape of food access here on O‘ahu, it is helpful to consider what barriers a household might face when trying to get food.

Food access can often be understood as a function of economic security, as most households access food through the market place. As such, household income is one of the most common barriers to food security. Households that are economically insecure are often forced to choose between essentials. In terms of food security, this can mean not having enough food or having less healthy food, which can impact health (increased incidence of diseases including obesity, heart disease, diabetes low energy levels, poor nutrition), daily functioning (increased stress, fewer opportunities to exercise), productivity, academic achievement (developmental delays for children), and future need for social services, among other things (Aloha United Way, 2017). 

According to the 2017 ALICE report, wherein ALICE stands for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, and Employed, even when income, government assistance, and non-profit food assistance were combined, there was still a 29% gap in resources for all Hawai‘i households to meet the basic ALICE threshold for food. The main coping strategies employed by households facing food security include: eating less food, eating less healthy food, seeking food assistance, forgoing essentials like medical care or utilities, or even pawning personal property to get money for food.

However, income is not the only barrier to food access. Some other barriers are:

  • Time constraint
  • Lack of transport: how far are food distribution centers and other key food access points from public transport ?
  • Housing: families experiencing housing insecurity or houselessness face barriers to food access including lack of space to store or prepare food and the inability to apply for benefits due to lack of address and
  • Disabilities: certain physical or mental disabilities may inhibit one's ability to access food
  • Immigration status: immigration status may limit your access to key food security programs such as SNAP or impact your ability to access food distributions. This is of particular concern for COFA communities
  • Isolation

While only income, transportation, and time are shown in the map below, all of these factors and more are important to consider when developing food access policies and programs.

Income

Here, the food access data shown above is overlaid with information about household income in a given zipcode. The O‘ahu ALICE households by Zipcode 2018 shows the percent of households below the ALICE threshold- the minimum income level necessary for a household to afford basic necessities- in a given area. The darker an area is, the higher the percentage of ALICE households in that area.

As income is correlated with food security, areas with a higher percentage of ALICE households are more likely to also have a higher percentage of households that are food insecure. Visualizing food access points in these high-ALICE areas can show community disinvestment on crucial social welfare factors.

Transportation

Also overlaid is transportation data, including bus stops, bus routes, and major streets. Understanding transportation options- and public transportation in particular- in proximity to food access point is crucial, as lack of transportation can be a major barrier to food security for individuals, families, and households.

Time

Information about time barriers can be inferred by clicking on individual data points, which show the hours and days of operation of food distribution points. Given that low-income individuals and households- those that rely on food distribution for their food security- may work multiple jobs and not adhere to a traditional Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm schedule, the best option for increasing food access in a given area is by having a range of dates and times for food distribution.

Areas where food distribution days and hours are similar likely decrease the number of households able to access emergency food assistance.

Food Access, Social Vulnerability, and the Cumulative Impacts of Environmental Injustice

Increasingly, mapping is being used as a tool for understanding the landscape of community vulnerability to climate change impacts and natural disaster shocks. For instance, the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) was developed as a tool to help identify what communities were most at risk in the face of hazards and disasters based on 15 indicators across four themes: socioeconomic status, household composition and disability, minority status and language, and housing and transportation. These indicators include: poverty and unemployment rates, educational attainment, family size, disability, and access to vehicles.

Food Distribution Sites overlaid with SoVI Data

As part of Action 16 of the  Ola: O‘ahu Resilience Strategy , we identified the need to map food banks and integrate that data with findings from the  O‘ahu SoVI   as a key strategy to helping keep key populations food secure in the face of a natural disaster, enabling us to study the location of food system resources/assets in relation to communities more vulnerable to risks and hazards

But beyond social vulnerability, tools such as the O‘ahu Food Access Map help us to understand key dimensions of environmental injustice. The principles of environmental justice include the fundamental right to land and food- both of which link to food access. Barriers to food access- and healthy food access in particular- are just one of the many ways that environmental burdens are distributed unequally between groups, with historically marginalized communities often disproportionately burdened. Pursuing policies and programs that help achieve the goals of environmental justice by increasing food and land access to underserved and marginalized communities is an important part of our work helping to build a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive island community.

O‘ahu Food Access Map

In the future, this map can be overlaid with more nuanced analysis on the links between food access, environmental justice, and health equity- for instance, including information on the healthfulness of available food items at the food access points surveyed above, as Austin did for their  food access map.  Yet this information represents a great starting point for understanding the food access landscape of our island- and therefore, a great place to begin planning food security policies and programs that help to address social vulnerability, environmental injustice, and redistribute benefits to those who will feel their impact the most.

Bibliography

Aloha United Way. (2017). ALICE: A Study of Financial Hardship in Hawai‘i. Honolulu: Aloha United Way.

Aloha United Way. (2020). ALICE in Hawai‘i: A Financial Hardship Study. Honolulu: Aloha United Way.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2006). Policy Brief: Food Security.(2). FAO. Retrieved from:  http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/faoitaly/documents/pdf/pdf_Food_Security_Cocept_Note.pdf 

Meter, K., & Phillips Goldberg, M. (2017). Hawaii's Food System: Food for All. Minneapolis: Crossroads Resource Center.

Data Sources

Da Bux Double Up Food Bucks retailers:  Da Bux find a retailer 

WIC retailers: Hawaii Department of Health  Oahu WIC Vendors 

Created by Reyna Cohen, Public Policy and Research Analyst