Giving Compass' Take:

• Jessica Fu reports on emerging research which suggests that proximity doesn’t matter as much as affordability in getting healthy food to people who need it, and how the term "food desert" could be out of date. 

• How can philanthropists help address the problems associated with food deserts?

• Learn more about understanding food deserts and food systems. 

Last month, the Fort Worth, Texas city council voted to ban development of new dollar stores within two miles of existing ones, and required that any new dollar-store facilities devote at least 15 percent of their floor space to fresh food. Around the same time one year prior, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma made a similar move, blocking new dollar stores from operating within a mile of others in three neighborhoods where residents were primarily black and experiencing unemployment at over twice the rate that white Tulsans were.

Since then, numerous localities, from New Orleans, Louisiana to DeKalb County, Georgia have followed suit, passing ordinance after ordinance aimed at resolving the same, seemingly intractable issue: a dearth of grocery stores that sell fresh food.

According to elected officials and proponents of such bans, traditional supermarkets struggle to compete with dollar stores because the business model of the latter faces significantly lower labor and operating costs. And that’s at least in part because not all of them sell fresh food. When conventional grocery stores fold as a result, the logic has gone, communities are left with fewer nearby options from which to buy fresh items like produce and meat.

Read the full article about food deserts by Jessica Fu at The Counter.