Food deserts can be described as geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance.
Twenty percent of Delaware census tracts are food deserts. Of these, 7.2% have a farmers’ market within their boundary, compared to 5.7% of non-food desert tracts. In 2015, according to the News Journal, 61% of Delawareans live in these food desert census tracts where there is no grocery store. Further, 27% of the state’s population live in census tracts, usually consisting of 1,200 to 8,000 people, that only have one grocery store.
Senate Bill 254 creates the Delaware Grocery Initiative to combat these food deserts.
It directs the Office of State Planning Coordination to study food insecurity in urban and rural food deserts.
The bill provides financial assistance to grocery stores, independently owned for-profit grocery stores, cooperative grocery stores, non-profit grocery stores as well as grocery stores owned and operated by local governmental units, to serve these food deserts by keeping stores open or incentivizing stores to move into the desert.
| Senate Bill 254 – Combating Food Deserts | Currrent Status – Senate Elections & Government Affairs 3/21/24 |
| House Sponsors – Chukwuocha, Baumbach, Neal, Griffith, Johnson, Moore, Williams | Senate Sponsors – Brown, Hoffner, Townsend, Gay, Lockman, Mantzavinos, Pinkney // Wilson |
| House Yes Votes – | Senate Yes Votes – |
| House No Votes – | Senate No Votes – |
| House Absents or Not Voting – | Senate Absent or Not Voting – |
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