Food Deserts in Chatham County, Georgia

I grew up in a rural county in Alabama that has a total of 3 grocery stores, none of which were in my town. I was raised on a farm, so I was fortunate to always have access to fresh, quality produce, but it was easy to see first-hand that this is not the case for many people that lived around me.

Food deserts are areas where residents have limited access to healthy food. This can be because of income, population, and inadequate transportation. A related term is food swamps. These are similar to food deserts and refer to areas that are overly saturated with fast food restaurants and other unhealthy options that perpetuate many issues.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, areas that qualify as food deserts are places where 500 people or 33% of the population lives more than 1 mile from the closest grocery store in urban areas.

I decided to do an analysis in Chatham county, Georgia to see how many people are living in food deserts there and explore what steps are being taken to improve these situations. Chatham county is the home of historical Savannah, a city known for being a tourist destination. I chose Savannah because it is not a place that would obviously face food access problems in my mind. It is easy to recognize food inequities in cities like New York and Seattle, but the charming city of Savannah doesn't stand out in this discussion.

There are many reasons why Chatham County has such food access problems...

For this analysis, I began by finding existing data on population and grocery store locations in Chatham County. I then performed a spatial analysis to determine the areas that would be defined as food deserts based on the USDA definition (places where 500 people or 33% of the population lives more than 1 mile from the closest grocery store in urban areas). Using zonal statistics, I was able to map population counts and percentages of people living in areas with limited food access.

The maps above show population counts and percentages of Chatham county residents living more than 1 mile from a grocery store and all grocery store locations in the county. It is important to note that the grocery store data here includes specialty grocery stores, farmer's markets, grocery department stores, and 'limited grocery stores'.

Through this analysis, I found that approximately 129,698 of the almost 290,000 (2019) people living in Chatham County are living in food deserts. This is 45% of the county population, which classifies the county as a food desert based on the USDA definition. This number is likely not quite representative of the entire county because of the dense metropolitan area of Savannah, and it may also not show the whole picture because some grocery stores included in the analysis are specialized or limited.

Based on this analysis, it is clear that there is a major food access issue in Chatham County.

Some communities are taking steps to work toward a healthier food landscape. Community gardens are becoming popular in Savannah and the surrounding areas and there is a significant effort to provide healthy food to communities with access problems.

The Forsyth Farmer's Market in Savannah provides a service called  Farm Truck 912  which is a mobile farmers market. They help fight food insecurity by reaching areas that may not typically have access to fresh produce and they also accept and double SNAP/EBT benefits.

City planners in Savannah are working to reform zoning codes in order to attract new grocery stores. This is coming after years of discriminatory laws that have prevented the development of healthy communities in this area.

Savannah planning commission member  Marcus Lotson supports these steps : "“We know where the food deserts are in Savannah. And we think we can address that with zoning.”

To get a complete picture of the food access problem in Chatham County that is seen in countless other counties, it would be necessary to consider these factors along with proximity to grocery stores:

1. Public transportation availability and access to a car
2. Health indicators such as obesity and diabetes rates
3. Median income of specific communities and average prices for food in the area
4. Types of restaurants and proximity to restaurants in certain communities

This is not a complete assessment of the issue at hand, but an introductory exploration of the severity of the problem.