Rural communities are increasingly facing the same food access challenges that have been associated with cities. Despite being surrounded by farmland, many residents struggle to find affordable, healthy food close to home.
Food deserts are often thought of as an urban issue, but rural America is facing the same challenge in surprising and troubling ways. A recent Daily Yonder article outlines how, despite being surrounded by farmland, many rural communities lack access to grocery stores and affordable, healthy food. According to the article and the USDA, nearly 54 million Americans, or 1 in 6, live in food deserts, and rural areas are disproportionately affected.
The decline of family farms has played a major role in this trend. For the past century, the United States has lost an average of 45,000 farms each year. This decline has led to population loss, reduced economic opportunity, and growing gaps in the local food supply chain. Consolidation in agriculture and food distribution has made both rural and urban communities more vulnerable to disruptions, such as those seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and outbreaks like avian influenza. Many farmers find themselves limited to growing commodity crops, often for animal feed, with few options to produce or sell fresh food locally.
From the article:
The solution could be shifting our food supply to combine the best of both places, creating farmland opportunity and consumer choice. A three-pronged approach would include focusing government and private R&D around technology to help farms of all sizes innovate; ensuring government policy guards fair markets, and diversifying subsidies to stabilize a well-rounded food supply, instead of playing favorites; and calling on consumers to shift how they shop.
In the 2025 legislative session, MACo supported a bill aimed at helping eliminate food deserts. The legislation would establish a workgroup to study and recommend solutions to eliminate food deserts across the state. The bill includes three county appointees from urban, suburban, and rural counties to the workgroup. However, the legislation ultimately failed to pass. According to the Maryland Food Bank, one in three Marylanders faces food insecurity. While food deserts manifest differently in urban, suburban, and rural counties, their impact on public health remains significant, contributing to poor nutrition, higher rates of chronic disease, and economic hardship.
