Abstract

Building on the increasing body of scholarship on the complexities of the widely used “food desert” concept, this case study of an urban community-supported agriculture (CSA) organization in New Orleans challenges the static and geographically bound nature of the concept’s definitions and applications. We used ArcGIS to map the addresses of the customers who purchase locally grown produce from the organization through its three distinct food distribution services: on-site markets, off-site pickup locations, and home deliveries. Our analysis of the spatial distribution and concentration of these addresses across the city, overlaid onto a map of the median household income at the census tract level, reveals that the predominantly white, middle-class customers come from all over the city, while hardly any customers come from low-income, predominantly African American census tracts. We also find some interesting differences across the three purchase options, based on which we argue that the food desert must be understood in terms of the spatial, temporal, and social dynamics of food access, rather than where people live in relation to the food outlets.