Map

This map details the areas of St. Louis that have a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, low access to supermarkets and low access to vehicles, according to the 2019 USDA Food Access Research Atlas. For more information, visit ers.usda.gov.

Yellow: Low-income census tract where more than 100 housing units do not have a vehicle and are more than a half-mile from the nearest supermarket.

Green: Low-income census tract where more than 100 housing units do not have a vehicle and are more than 1 mile from the nearest supermarket.

Plastic bags rustle and footsteps pound on the floor on a Sunday morning inside a North County church. Teresa Ramsey and other volunteers from local nonprofit The Fit and Food Connection rush to prepare food for almost 50 families. In each bag, volunteers place a set amount of healthy food products – bunches of kale, cartons of eggs and cans of vegetables – based on the family’s size. Ramsey’s pace quickens, and in a matter of minutes, the bags are transported to the church’s entrance hall, where they await delivery drivers who will take the pantry’s food directly to families in need. After a few minutes, Ramsey loads up her own car with bags to deliver on her own. “I’m here almost every Sunday,” she says. This program is just one way that the nonprofit aims to fight against food insecurity in its community.

According to The Fit and Food Connection, access to healthy food is far from a guaranteed resource in St. Louis – as of 2020, more than 200,000 individuals in the metro area are food insecure. On the surface, food deserts might appear to be a reason for this. But in reality, they’re just one symptom of a larger systemic problem that intersects with public health, housing, crime and racial equity.

“The kind of food that folks are able to consistently access is really one of the building blocks of health,” Katie Kaufmann, senior strategist at Missouri Foundation for Health, says. “[Lack of access to healthy food] is a problem that’s been going on for generations.”

The historical policies that ultimately led to food insecurity in St. Louis also had enduring racially discriminatory impacts, Kaufmann adds. Today, activists and organizers are using innovative methods to reverse the decades of damage.

Although it might seem as though food deserts just “exist,” according to Webster University cultural anthropology professor Jong Bum Kwon, these inequities are anything but happenstance.

“People who are a bit more progressive or radical in their political orientation would actually call food deserts more like food apartheid, or an issue of food justice, which is then related to these larger issues around racial justice,” Kwon says. “A lack of affordable and nutritious food is simply one consequence or symptom of a broader system of structural or institutionalized racism. And I think that is actually the more appropriate way to look at it.”

UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES OF SEGREGATED FOOD INSECURITY IN ST. LOUIS REQUIRES A LOOK BACK AT PAST HOUSING AND REDLINING POLICIES.

1916: St. Louis Real Estate Exchange successfully gets a racial zoning ordinance placed on the 1916 citywide ballot. It passes, prohibiting Black residents from purchasing homes or residing on blocks with more than 75 percent white residents.

1917: In Buchanan V. Warley, the Supreme Court finds racial zoning unconstitutional as a violation of the 14th Amendment.

1920-40: Deed covenants are established by local developers; they bind homeowners to restrict certain land use, including race of occupant. These covenants prevent a growing Black population in St. Louis from purchasing homes.

1934: The Federal Housing Administration is established to insure bank loans for housing; it makes funds available for a massive surveying and evaluation of existing housing stock. It develops residential security maps to assess whether housing in a neighborhood is a good or bad financial risk, which ultimately sustains segregation.

1937: St. Louis is redlined. The residential security map divides the city and county into four categories labeled A through D and gives areas with increasing Black populations a lower grade. This discourages mortgage lenders from offering financial assistance for purchasing homes in lower grade – usually minoritypopulated – areas.

1959: The city demolishes the predominantly Black neighborhood Mill Creek Valley to build Highway 40 and industrial zones.

Important Food Access Definitions to Know

food desert: an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food (Oxford Languages) food apartheid: a term used to highlight the lack of access to healthy food caused by a system of institutional racial segregation and discrimination (Stray Dog Institute) food justice: a grassroots initiative that began in response to food insecurity and economic pressures that prevent access to healthy, nutritious and culturally relevant foods (“Cultivating Food Justice”)

1968: The Fair Housing Act passes. It prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex.

The legacy of redlining and discriminatory housing practices lives on in St. Louis today in many ways, including through the availability of quality food in primarily Black neighborhoods, especially in north St. Louis city and North County. Erica Williams, founder and executive director of nonprofit A Red Circle, experienced this disinvestment firsthand. Growing up in North County, Williams watched as three major supermarkets – Schnucks, Kroger and National – closed their doors, which left her neighborhood without access to healthy food.

Now, A Red Circle provides fresh produce from its community garden and urban farms to these areas and offers programming designed to educate the community about healthy eating and cooking. “When you have a region that’s a food desert, it becomes other types of deserts – an opportunity desert, a jobs desert,” Williams says. “We really want to bring up the region of North County, not just grow food and give it out.”

The organization’s next move is to open a community-owned and -run grocery store, which will create more job opportunities. This holistic approach is the one that will be the most beneficial for the communities themselves, according to Kwon.

“What would it mean if we actually have a worker-owned and -run grocery store, in which the people who live in the neighborhood work there and take care of these things – to empower neighborhoods, rather than simply serve?” Kwon says. “[The service provision] is a model of charity rather than a model of empowerment. Part of it is we need to empower communities to do what’s right for their own communities, give them the opportunity to grow and develop and give them the resources to do so.”

Just as it took decades of discriminatory policies to create the issues we have today, it will take decades of positive change to dismantle them. That’s why the Missouri Foundation for Health recently launched a 20-year food justice initiative with the goal to support existing organizations dedicated to the cause (like A Red Circle); remove barriers to access programs like SNAP (formerly known as food stamps); and build up community-run, equitable and resilient food systems.

With these methods, MFH hopes to provide healthy, affordable and culturally relevant food to Missourians in need. “We really believe that this is an issue that undercuts many of the health challenges that Missourians face,” Kaufmann says. “It’s one that we want to take on because we think that that will help accelerate some of the other changes that the foundation is invested in, like infant mortality, behavioral health and well-being – even things like our violence prevention work.”

Another organization dedicated to looking at the whole picture is The Fit and Food Connection, which realized that because many