Geography of Food Deserts in the Niagara Region

by

Philip Dwomoh

Supervisor: Associate Professor Jeffery Boggs

Geography Department

Faculty of Graduate Studies,

Brock University

St. Catharines, Ontario

INTRODUCTION • Simply put, a food desert is a situation where residents involuntarily cannot have access to healthy and nutritious

food.

• Recent food desert studies have shown that the concept of a food desert has extensively been used to highlight social

exclusion, environmental injustice, income inequality, poverty and other problems associated with poor access to

retail food establishments (Acheson, 1998; Cummins & Macintyre, 1999; Hughes, 2000 as cited in McEntee &

Agyeman, 2010; Wrigley et al., 2002; Smoyer-Tomic et al., 2006).

• The term food desert is often used to explain the overlapping nature of economic and physical access to nutritious

and healthy foods (Wrigley et al., 2002; Smoyer-Tomic et al., 2006).

• Along with the limited literature on food deserts in rural areas, very little has been written on the impact of land-use

zoning on food access in North America, especially in Canada (Pothukuchi & Kaufman, 2000; Pothukuchi, 2004).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• RQ1: Where are food deserts in Niagara?

• RQ2: To what degree are Niagara’s food deserts associated with the factors theorized in the literature to cause

food deserts?

OPERATIONALIZATION OF FOOD DESERTS IN NIAGARA• I relied on data that have aggregated individual- or household-level observations into areal units. Thus, the

location shifts from that of the residence, essentially a point, to that of an area.

• The concept of food deserts is a function of food accessibility. Food accessibility is the independent variable;

food desert is the dependent variable. Crudely put, food deserts result from low levels of food accessibility. In

other words, food inaccessibility causes food deserts.

• However, as a result of limited access to data, I collected seven variables that influence food accessibility.

These variables were centered on age, income, land-use zoning, number of supermarkets, physical distance to

the nearest supermarket, access to public transit and population density

CLAIMS

Claim #1: Percentage of the elderly is negatively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of the neighbourhood’s centroid.

Claim #2: Percentage of household low-income measure is negatively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of the neighbourhood’s centroid.

Claim #3: Population density is positively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of neighbourhood’s centroid.

Claim #4: Population per kilometre of transit line is negatively related to distance to the nearest supermarket. Claim #5: Population per kilometre of transit line is positively related to the number of supermarkets within

5 km of neighbourhood’s centroid.Claim #6: Percentage of commercial zoning is positively related to the number of supermarkets in a

neighbourhood.Claim #7: The percentage of commercial zoning is negatively related to distance to the nearest supermarket. Claim #8: The percentage of residential zoning is positively related to the shortest distance to supermarkets

in a neighbourhood.

DATA SOURCE

Data used for the study of food deserts in the Niagara Region were gathered from three sources.

Niagara Poverty Initiative (NPI) Income (predominately Low-income Measure (LIM)) Population Age particularly elderly population

Niagara Open Data Neighbourhood boundaries shapefiles Public transit routes Number and location of supermarkets

Scholars Geoportal Land-use zoning

SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CORRELATION ANALYSISQuantitative Mapping Spatial Analysis

• spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I) Linear Correlation AnalysisCorrelation Pearson’s r value Common interpretation

-1 Perfect negative association

-0.8 to -0.999 Strong negative association

-0.4 to -0.799 Moderate negative association

-0.399 to -0.15 Weak negative association

-0.149 to 0.001 No association

0 Perfectly random; the two variables share no

systematic variation.

+0.001 to +0.149 (Probably) no association

+0.15 to +0.399 Weak positive association

+0.4 to +0.799 Moderate positive association

+0.8 to+0.999 Strong positive association

1 Perfect positive association

Claim #1: Percentage of the elderly is negatively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of the neighbourhood’s centroid.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Percentage of the Elderly

Number of supermarkets within 5km from the centroids

Neighbourhood’s Elderly Population (≥ 65) and Access to Supermarket in Niagara

Claim 2: Percentage of household low-income measure (LIM) is negatively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of the neighbourhood’s centroid.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Percentage of household LIM

Number of supermarkets within 5km from the centroids

Neighbourhood’s Low-income Measure and Access to Supermarket in Niagara

Claim 3: Population density is positively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of neighbourhood’s centroid.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Population Density

Number of supermarkets within 5km from the centroids

Neighbourhoods’ Population Density and Access to Supermarkets in Niagara

Claim 4: Population per kilometre of transit line is negatively related to distance to the nearest supermarket.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Population per kilometre of

transit line

Distance to the nearest supermarket

Neighbourhood’s Population per km of Transit Line and Distance to Nearest Supermarket in Niagara

Claim 5: Population per kilometre of transit line is positively related to the number of supermarkets within 5 km of neighbourhood’s centroid.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Population per kilometre of

transit line

Number of supermarkets within 5km from the centroids

Neighbourhood’s Population per km of Transit Line and Access to Supermarket in Niagara

Claim 6: Percentage of commercial zoning is positively related to the number of supermarkets in a neighbourhood.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Percentage of commercial zoning

Number of supermarkets in a neighbourhood

Neighbourhood’s Commercial Zoning and Number of Supermarkets in Niagara

Claim #7: The percentage of commercial zoning is negatively related to distance to the nearest supermarket.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Percentage of commercial zoning

Distance to the nearest supermarket

Neighbourhood’s Commercial Zoning and Distance to the Nearest Supermarkets in Niagara

Claim #8: The percentage of residential zoning is positively related to distance to the nearsestsupermarkets in a neighbourhood.

• Spatial Autocorrelation Percentage of residential zoning

Distance to the nearest supermarket

Neighbourhood’s Residential Zoning (%) and Distance(km) to the Nearest Supermarket

CONCLUSION

I found empirical validation in Niagara for six of my claims about the association between the food

accessibility variables (i.e., conformed to what my literature review suggests is a likely pattern).

However, two results did not conform to what my literature review suggests is a likely pattern. My analysis

failed to confirm that these food accessibility variables ( i.e., percentage of elderly population and total

household income) were able to explain the distribution of food deserts in Niagara.

RECOMMENDATIONS

First and foremost, new research must also focus on other types of healthy food stores.

Future studies must find other methods of measuring healthy food access rather than the use of centroids.

Further studies on food deserts must be conducted at the individual level to understand individual experiences

of accessing healthy food stores.

For my future research, I would like to re-run my analysis using dissemination areas or other units smaller

than the neighbourhoods to see if these patterns also hold.

Finally, in later works, I would investigate if the transformed variables can be more appropriate for analysis

using ordinary least squares regression.

THANK YOU