Food deserts persist, but local organizations are fighting back

Nearly 28 percent of the United States was considered a food desert in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In metropolitan areas shaped by redlining and poverty, the disparities are even more pronounced, and the Twin Cities are no exception.

Wilder Research ranked Minnesota as the seventh-worst state in the country for grocery access. A study by The Food Trust identified 900,000 Minnesotans as living in a food desert, with nearly one-fourth of them children.

The USDA defines food deserts as areas with high poverty located more than a half-mile from a grocery store. Living in a food desert is associated with lower life expectancy and higher rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Limited access to fresh produce disproportionately affects people from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds and those with low incomes.

In the Twin Cities, food deserts include parts of northwest and northeast Minneapolis and North St. Paul, areas that closely align with historically redlined neighborhoods. Redlining, the discriminatory banking practice of devaluing predominantly non-white areas, prevented generations of residents from building wealth.

Today, many of those same neighborhoods have higher percentages of residents on SNAP benefits and lower rates of car ownership. Without a vehicle, traveling multiple miles to a grocery store is often unfeasible. When residents do find food nearby, it is frequently marked up at corner stores and convenience stores.

Minneapolis responded by implementing a “staple food ordinance” requiring licensed grocers to carry certain products, including dairy and dairy alternatives, proteins, fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes. The policy was the first of its kind in the United States. However, a National Institutes of Health review found low compliance among stores and little change in customer purchasing practices.

Small stores face structural barriers that make compliance difficult. Purchasing produce at wholesale prices is often out of reach, forcing owners to buy already marked-up goods from larger grocery stores and resell them at a further premium. Many also lack the refrigeration capacity to keep produce fresh, making packaged and processed foods a more practical, and profitable, option.

Brightside Produce is among the Twin Cities organizations working toward sustainable solutions. The nonprofit delivers produce to 50 corner stores across the metro, with no minimum order requirement, allowing smaller stores to buy limited quantities at wholesale prices. A buyback program lets stores return unsold produce at the end of the week, eliminating financial risk.

“The goal with Brightside’s founding was to help corner stores have a feasible way of getting low-cost, high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables that they could sell in their stores,” said Justa Heinen-Kay, the organization’s co-director.

Brightside also runs a “Food as Medicine” program, partnering with five Minneapolis community health clinics to deliver produce directly to patients experiencing food insecurity alongside chronic diet-related conditions such as diabetes or heart disease, at no cost to recipients.

Early data from the program is encouraging: 74 percent of participants saw lower blood pressure, 73 percent showed lower HbA1c levels, a key diabetes marker, and 89 percent reported feeling better able to manage their health.

The Twin Cities Mobile Market, a project of The Food Group, takes a different approach, sending a fully stocked mobile grocery store into neighborhoods without access to a full-service store. The market serves nearly 10,000 customers. In 2019, 84 percent of surveyed customers reported eating more fruits and vegetables, and 89 percent said they had greater access to healthy food.

“Food justice is part of racial justice,” said Leah Porter, the project’s founder.

Some neighborhoods have also seen brick-and-mortar responses to the gap in access. Colonial Market opened a North Minneapolis location after an Aldi closed there, and later expanded to south Minneapolis. North Market, a nonprofit grocery store in North Minneapolis, offers half-off produce every Wednesday.

These smaller, mission-driven stores are increasingly filling voids left by national chains exiting low-income areas. A pattern Heinen-Kay says points to a larger systemic failure.

“If it’s left up to big businesses, it’s just not going to work,” she said. “Because if those stores aren’t profitable, they’re going to leave. It’s like the Aldi in North Minneapolis. It’s like the Lunds & Byerlys in downtown St. Paul. They weren’t making money, so they closed. Well, now whose problem is it? Because then there are whole communities that have nowhere to shop.”

Anya Armentrout is a freelance journalist, a student at Macalester College, and a contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.