MAPPING AIDS BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF FOOD DESERTS

Green areas are food deserts locally.

Food desert maps are commonplace, but the Maryland Food System Map (MFSM) goes further than most. The MFSM details the state’s entire food system, not just its food deserts. When the map launched in 2012 with 30 data indicators, it focused mainly on retail outlets: locations of supermarkets, convenience stores, and small local shops. Now it includes 175 indicators, adding layers for agriculture (small farms, livestock operations, prime farmland); demographics (income, employment); health (mortality, diabetes, and obesity rates); and environmental indicators (air and water quality, biodiversity, and designated environmental cleanup areas). Nonprofits and food policy councils across the state have used MFSM to address food access gaps. In Baltimore, the city’s Food Policy Initiative used it to chart food access across the city and tackle the gaps from an urban-planning perspective. One result of that effort, which began in 2015, was the Baltimore City Orchard Project–a nonprofit that plants clusters of fruit trees in parks and underused spaces around the city–targeting its new projects specifically to populate food deserts and create new sources of fresh produce resource in those areas. MFSM is run through Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future.

Source: Fast Company, 10/19/17, Mapping Food Deserts