Stitching Resources: Untangling food access research methods from GIS

Keywords: food access, street vendors, informal economies, mobility, food security
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 5

Abstract

Policy discussions of food access and food security routinely fail to consider how consumers “stitch” together food resources to meet their needs, placing differential value on supermarkets and other “one-stop-shops” while ignoring specialized vendors and informal feeding networks. The use of GIS exacerbates this tendency through its dependence on secondary data sources and specific data formats. In this presentation, I will reflect on my experiences conducting food access research in a rural area of the Dominican Republic, where secondary data sources are scarce and food resources are as mobile as their customers. First, I will present a case study that uses ArcGIS and concentrates on consumer behaviors instead of food resources (Barr 2017). Then I will explain how that process influenced my conceptualization of food access and enabled me to “stitch” together a representation of spatial food access with more attention to mobility and temporality. Finally, I will outline a new focus for food access research at the population level which emphasizes the diversity of food resources in an area as a measure of community food security.