Friday, May 13 2011 7:53AM
First lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative has brought attention to issues surrounding the lack of affordable access to healthy food for disadvantaged U.S. residents.
Organizations who want to help rural communities gain access to nutritious food may want to check out the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new interactive online map, which provides information about food deserts located throughout the country.
According to the USDA website, the
Food Desert Locator provides an overview of where food-desert census tracts are located, as well as population characteristics of those tracts and downloadable data, which can be used for community planning.
The creation of the map was part of first lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative, aimed to help with economic development in rural communities nationwide by creating grocery stores and farmers' markets in areas where access to nutritious food is limited or non-existent.
Jim Dawson, a food sourcing specialist with Feeding South Dakota, told the Argus Leader that while this map shows the areas which need nutritious food the most, all communities in the country need to improve access to naturally grown produce.
"Every small community, no matter how rural, has some kind of emergency food source or agency," he told the paper. "That face of hunger isn't limited to one segment of our population."