The Sacramento County Planning and Community Development Department recently completed its Food Desert Study. The lack of access to fresh, affordable food puts residents who live in food deserts or food imbalance areas at a health disadvantage. This study identified the location of these areas in the county.
"Healthy communities is a strategy in our Housing Element and one of the implementation programs for this strategy is identifying areas that are underserved by supermarkets and other providers of healthy foods," according to Tim Koyaha, a planner with Sacramento County.
Citizens and community groups who focus on providing local and healthy foods can use the maps to see which neighborhoods have food desert and food imbalance situations. The county also hopes to use this better data to be a part of the solution.
"Ultimately, we would like to develop an incentive program (another implementation program in our Housing Element) which will incentivize healthy food providers to locate in or near food desert and food imbalance areas," says Koyaha, who is looking for funding for this phase. One example of what the county could do is to amend its zoning code to make it easier to locate facilities such as farmers' markets and produce stands in an urban setting.
The study combined 2000 Census information with data about supermarkets and fast food restaurants.
For more information contact Tim Kohaya at (916) 874-5982 or kohayat@saccounty.net.