The existence of areas with low accessibility to healthy foods, known as food deserts, have been identified as a serious issue contributing to food insecurity in both urban and rural regions in the United States, especially in areas where minority population reside. North Carolina is greatly affected by this issue, which is why integrated, interdisciplinary research is underway to examine and understand the multi-dimensional and complex problem. This project aims to analyze “food desert” phenomena that integrates human systems and natural systems to significantly improve the understanding of food accessibility, availability and affordability while maximizing the production and minimizing the negative environmental impacts.

The complexity of North Carolina's food desert issue supports the complexity of our research team; five researchers in five departments across two HBCUs: NCAT (North Carolina A&T State Unversity) and NCCU North Carolina Central University. Our researchers are bringing data modeling expertise to better understand the drivers of food desert phenomena and ultimately to develop alternative solutions to this problem.

The research is centered on geographically-varied, food-challenged communities in North Carolina with changing demographic profiles, with county-level analyses focusing in three diverse regions of North Carolina including both rural and urban communities: eastern coastal region represented by Bladen County, the central flat region (Piedmont) represented by Guilford County, and the Western mountain region represented by Rutherford County.