An i newspaper story on the rise of Food Deserts: areas of towns and cities where residents have no stores selling healthy food within a reasonable walking distance of home. These are often added to by a lack of access to money. Banks have closed their branches, and ATMs may charge a fee for withdrawal because they are not operated by the big banks. All of this adds to the expense of accessing basic services: these homes may have payment cards for their electricity, for example, which often has a higher tariff rate. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of households living in, or close to, poverty as a result of the impacts of the pandemic and the latest round of business closures is likely to lead to more issues.
Noel Jenkins was well ahead of the curve on this, as usual, exploring food deserts many years ago in Somerset and sharing resources on this topic.
The pandemic, and particularly the need to isolate has brought some of these issues back to the surface again. If you need to suddenly buy a week's worth of food, this can become problematic in some locations.
This is not a new issue then. This BBC article dates from 2018, and suggests a million people lived in food deserts at that time.
Sheffield University researchers explored the growing problem more recently.
Megan Blake worked in the Department of Geography.
Comments