I was born and raised in a place where the nearest grocery store was ~30 miles away. The median annual household income in 2000 was <$30k. My senior class in high school consistent of 32 people. I literally visited the homes of classmates who had dirt floors and no running water.
People who live in those areas have access to automobiles. Most of them have at least one operable vehicle per family; those that don't cooperate with friends, family, and neighbors to get what they need. To this day I regularly pick up hitchhikers when I'm driving through the area.
I think the real argument here is that the term "food desert" seems much more extreme than the experience actually is. None of those people are going hungry because they can't get to the grocery store. The few that are going hungry, are going hungry because they're so strung out on drugs that they aren't capable of planning ahead even 24 hours.
In other words, the lack of easy access to resources isn't the issue - it's the relatively large number of adults in poverty who are in that situation because of their own behavior. Whether they're capable of changing that behavior isn't the point here - they would be in a similar situation even if they were literally next door to a grocery store.
I was born and raised in a place where the nearest grocery store was ~30 miles away. The median annual household income in 2000 was <$30k. My senior class in high school consistent of 32 people. I literally visited the homes of classmates who had dirt floors and no running water.
People who live in those areas have access to automobiles. Most of them have at least one operable vehicle per family; those that don't cooperate with friends, family, and neighbors to get what they need. To this day I regularly pick up hitchhikers when I'm driving through the area.
I think the real argument here is that the term "food desert" seems much more extreme than the experience actually is. None of those people are going hungry because they can't get to the grocery store. The few that are going hungry, are going hungry because they're so strung out on drugs that they aren't capable of planning ahead even 24 hours.
In other words, the lack of easy access to resources isn't the issue - it's the relatively large number of adults in poverty who are in that situation because of their own behavior. Whether they're capable of changing that behavior isn't the point here - they would be in a similar situation even if they were literally next door to a grocery store.