Food Desert vs. Food Apartheid: What’s the Difference?

In the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, a staggering 44.2 million people were food insecure, meaning they struggled to get enough food, in 2022. That accounts for about one in eight households in the country. We also know that lack of access to proper nutrition results in poorer health outcomes for families who struggle with food insecurity.

You might hear some people chalking these injustices up to “food deserts,” which the 2008 Farm Bill defined as “area[s] in the United States with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly such […] area[s] composed of predominantly lower-income neighborhoods and communities.” The idea is that some people don’t have access to quality food in the U.S. simply because they live too far from adequate grocery stores or other food retailers.

But some critics argue that the term “food desert” obscures the reality of the flaws in our food system and incorrectly diagnoses the problem at hand. A 2014 study of SNAP (food stamps) participants found that geographic access wasn’t actually correlated with the number of food-insecure households. Research has also indicated that most people don’t necessarily source the majority of their food from the closest food retailer; they often travel farther to a preferred grocery store, which indicates that proximity isn’t necessarily the most important factor when it comes to securing food for a healthy diet.

According to Feeding America, the most common cause of food insecurity is, simply, low income. Some people aren’t making enough money to buy healthy food; building a Whole Foods directly next to their homes isn’t going to solve their access problem if they have to choose between a $4 bag of carrots and paying their electricity bills. And who are the people most likely to suffer from low incomes? Predictably, it’s people of color, women and disabled people who struggle the most.

To better reflect these realities, community gardener and political activist Karen Washington coined the term “food apartheid,” which many believe more accurately describes the root causes of food injustice in our country. A desert is natural, an unavoidable reality of the landscape. Apartheid, on the other hand, is a system that’s instituted and enforced by humans. It’s not an accident; it’s purposeful. 

In an interview with Guernica Magazine, Washington explains, “‘Food apartheid’ looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith and economics. You say ‘food apartheid’ and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?”

Not only could the term “food desert” paint an inaccurate portrait of our country’s food and nutrition predicaments and their causes, but it also frames people living in “food deserts” as lacking in agency when in reality they often create successful, more equitable food distribution systems that can be more difficult to measure than traditional grocery store density. “‘Desert’ also makes us think of an empty, absolutely desolate place,” says Washington in her Guernica interview. “But when we’re talking about these places, there is so much life and vibrancy and potential. Using that word runs the risk of preventing us from seeing all of those things.”

Some may find this precision of language to be too nitpicky or believe that a focus on more accurately naming the problem does very little to rectify it. But language does shape the way we see issues and the actions we take to fix them. After all, if you needed water in a desert, you’d probably just find a way to pump it in; similarly, you might plop a Trader Joe’s in a low-income area. But why wasn’t there a grocery store there in the first place? If the issue is instead framed as apartheid, the solutions look much different, albeit a lot more complicated. How have systemic inequalities created a landscape in which some of us have basically unlimited access to food and others have very limited resources in which to access it? And how are each of us (especially white, privileged people), individually, enforcing these inequalities?

Being critical about the language we use, especially when it pertains to matters as important as food access, is one of the first steps we can take to create a better, more equitable future, on the food justice front and beyond.

Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.