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The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the food insecurity issue across the nation, especially for vulnerable population groups. As an important way to access food, online grocery shopping has gained substantial popularity during COVID-19. However, it is not clear how COVID-19 impacted both the in-store and online grocery shopping simultaneously and how the impacts varied among different population groups. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on food access, we conducted two rounds of online survey during the initial and middle stages of COVID-19 in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. In addition to the factors that have been examined in the literature, we examined how travel behavior, food environment, and lifestyle change affected both in-store and online shopping during COVID-19 when compared with before COVID-19. Analysis results suggest that the methods people used for grocery shopping varied with different stages of COVID-19 and among different population groups. Changes of people's daily life and travel behavior during COVID-19 are found to be associated with people's grocery shopping method selection. While people with better food environment were more likely to keep in-store grocery shopping, as the pandemic progressed, food environment became less important as a factor influencing the adoption of online grocery shopping. Food assistance program participants had a higher demand for the online grocery shopping service. However, the barriers associated with redeeming their benefits online prohibited them from becoming new online grocery shoppers during COVID-19. The study provides important insights into planning of food provision and formulating effective intervention strategies during future shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adequate access to healthy food has become a social issue due to the recent Great Recession and heightened levels of unemployment. Geographers have focused their attention on how to accurately evaluate food access and how to identify and delineate food deserts; that is, low-income neighborhoods where affordable and healthy food is lacking or limited. Findings of recent food access studies are, however, dramatically inconsistent. We argue that spatial scale and the level of aggregation used in constructing food access measures could account for a major portion of the varying results. We draw on an empirical study in the Tucson, Arizona, metropolitan area, to examine how varying geographic scales and aggregation methods affect food access assessment. We also provide an analysis to show how spatial scale and aggregation practices lead to inconsistent conclusions about food access and designation of food deserts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents a study of visits to farmers' markets, a rapidly growing urban phenomenon in the U.S., from a geographic perspective. Although the social and economic impacts of farmers' markets have received considerable attention recently, examining farmers' market access in space-time is still lacking in the existing analytical frameworks. This study challenges conventional food access measures that have been primarily focused on the spatial separation between markets and consumers' homes and proposes a more realistic space-time based strategy. A survey was conducted on twelve markets in Tucson, Arizona. Analysis results show that majority of market patrons went to a market that was different from the one nearest to their homes, and the market choice, including the geographic location and the associated market operating time, was highly affected by patrons' other daily activities. The particular types of activities combined with farmers' market trips were found to vary temporally and fluctuate based on patron's employment characteristics. Our study suggests that conventional food access measures should be used in caution to assess farmers' market access as these measures can lead to an overestimate of the travel consumers are willing or even able to incur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to a variety of affordable and healthy food has been a critical component in sustainable food-system planning. Research on food accessibility and food deserts (low-income areas with no or limited access to healthy food) can have important policy implications for alleviating health disparities. In the existing food access literature, supermarkets or large chain grocery stores have typically been used as the basis for measuring food access. Independent/non-chain grocers are often left out. We propose a multidimensional accessibility based assessment method to examine whether and how independent grocers help shape the food landscape and their locational strategy. A food desert elimination optimization model is formulated to evaluate the effectiveness of relying on small, full-service grocers for servicing food desert neighborhoods. The empirical study conducted in Tucson, Arizona indicates that, while full-service independent grocers fill some gaps left by chain markets, such stores are more helpful for improving food access diversity; this is reflected by the co-locating patterns of chain and non-chain stores. A few independent stores do, however, primarily serve food deserts in racially/ethnically diverse neighborhoods where higher proportions of residents rely on public assistance program and have limited mobility. Our case study suggests that small, independent grocers may have significant potential to aid in servicing areas with no or limited access to healthy food, particularly if policy incentives are provided. • We examined the role of full service independent grocery stores in shaping urban foodscape. • A spatial optimization model was developed to maximally eliminate food deserts. • Independent grocers are found to fill in the gaps left behind by chain stores in some communities while in many more add to the diversity rather than proximity. • They tend to serve more racially/ethnically diversified and dense neighborhoods. • Promoting small independent grocers in un- or underserved areas has great potential to improve regional food accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]