Food deserts are often talked about in urban settings. However, many rural areas in the state have seen grocers and other sources of fresh food disappear over the years.
In a rural setting, a food desert is defined as a location that is more than 10 miles away from a supermarket or large grocery store, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Nonprofits, faced with longer distances and lower density, have struggled to find solutions for food insecurity in rural Louisiana communities.
In southwest Louisiana, Second Harvest Food Bank is hoping to grow its reach into rural areas in that part of the state by the end of the year thanks to a new warehouse in Lake Charles, Regional Director Paul Scelfo said.
Higher needs in rural areas
In 2023, 13.5% of U.S. households were food insecure. In rural communities, that number was 15.4% of households. Even though rural counties make up 63% of the United States, they represent 89% of the most food-insecure counties.
In 2022's Map the Meal Gap compiled by Feeding America, 46 out of the state's 64 parishes have food insecurity rates higher than 15%. In the southwestern part of the state, 14.8% of Lafayette Parish households faced food insecurity. Every parish that rings Lafayette saw even higher levels of food insecurity, with Acadia Parish the highest at 19.5%.
Those numbers are likely higher when taking into consideration record levels of inflation in recent years, leading to 1 in 7 people Louisianans struggling to access healthy foods.
There are multiple reasons why food deserts in rural communities are so hard to combat, Scelfo said, including a scarcity of both infrastructure and partnering organizations.
Food intended for rural areas in southwest Louisiana had to come from Lafayette, he said. Trucks have to drive more than 75 miles to reach Lake Charles before food is further distributed to rural parishes such as Cameron, Beauregard and Jeff Davis.
Trucks currently drive to Lake Charles twice a week. With the opening of a new warehouse in Lake Charles, the organization will be able to distribute every day.
"That gets us a lot shorter distribution line," Scelfo said. "So that way we can service those pantries that we have more often, and we put more pounds of food in the area."
Community partners
However, the organization faces another hurdle; the need for more pantries and partnering organizations in rural areas, he said.
In New Orleans, the organization has to travel on average 5 miles to reach a partnering food distribution site. In rural areas, that distance is more like 20 miles.
In Vermilion Parish, Second Harvest has three pantries covering the entire parish. In Beauregard, there's only one. The organization has its own "mobile market" that travels to locations but runs into the limitation of serving only so many people ever so often.
"That community is either driving to us or we're putting a mobile market in place to drive that product in," he said. "Whatever the case, it is twice as hard, twice as expensive to deliver to those people. It may be 10 people coming out, but it's a whole section of a community that is not served otherwise."
The group is looking toward parish governments and civic leaders to be able to better reach their communities. In Port Barre, the local police department operates its own mobile market. In Carencro, the city created its food distribution building. In Acadia Parish, the local Boys and Girls Club of Acadiana is working toward creating an after-school program in partnership with Second Harvest.
The city of Carencro's pantry is one of the most recent partners added to the network. The city of around 12,000 is a mix of a small urban core surrounded by rural farmland and homes.
The city opened its food distribution center about two months ago, Valerie Vosset, a distribution organizer, said. The pantry operates three days a month and served around 300 elderly and low-income residents during its first month. Vosset expects to serve even more residents as they continue to get the word out.
The city has a 20% poverty rate, and its southern portion is considered low-income with low access to grocery stores. Mayor Charlotte Clavier sees food insecurity as less of an issue with access to food but rather the rising cost of all goods, pushing people to get by with less.
“I think (food insecurity) is a big problem everywhere," she said. "The economy is tough right now. Everything costs more.”
Carencro’s program is in its early stages, but it is looking toward bringing the mobile commodities market to some elderly housing facilities to reach residents who lack transportation. The program is also hoping to grow its team of volunteers. So far, Clavier said, community support has been tremendous.
“Because this is Carencro. My city, her city, our city. People support each other; this is the way we operate,” she said.
Through partnerships like the one in Carencro, Second Harvest has been able to increase its food distribution by 20% in southwest Louisiana, meeting about 32% of the food needs in the area. A warehouse might be able to shift that number even higher, Scelfo said.
"Our goal over the next eight years is to get that to 75%," he said. "It is an exciting time for us."