Sociospatial Analysis of Food Pantry Access and Location in a Southwestern Frontier Community

ABSTRACT

We explore the relationship between food insecurity and geographic position in Silver City, NM. Using a survey of more than 100 respondents and desktop GIS analysis, we investigate whether distance, neighborhood, and socioeconomic status have a bearing on access and use of food pantries. Results indicate there is no pronounced relationship between recipience of government benefits and food pantry use, recipience of government benefits and neighborhood of residence, or household income and self-reported distance to a food pantry. Results may appear counterintuitive: Food pantry use has increased in the USA, but the profile of a pantry client is not axiomatic.

KEYWORDS:

• Food insecurity
• food pantries
• Southwest
• sociospatial
• GIS
• socioeconomic surveys
• government benefits
• ideal location
• transportation analysis
• mobility

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge Western New Mexico University student researcher Gabriel Atencio for his assistance on this project. Invaluable local and regional data was also shared by Roadrunner Food Bank and the staff of The Commons: Center for Sustainability and Food Security for review.

Data deposition

The persistent identifier for this dataset is DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/N7Y8V

Data availability statement

The survey instrument and anonymized survey data results are available at the Open Science Framework: osf.io/n7y8v.

Disclosure statement

This project (#18-006: “Developing Gravity and Spatial Interaction Models for The Volunteer Center of Silver City”) was approved by the Western New Mexico University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). None of the authors have any conflicts of interest to disclose.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. At 346,234 lbs of food distributed in 2020 compared to 217,076 lbs. for the second-largest pantry, the Silver City Gospel Mission [personal correspondence with Melissa 81]

2. The questionnaire used in this study does not query immigration status and we have nothing to report or conclude about its role as a result.

3. When the analysis is oriented around “low” or “very low” food security, New Mexico’s percentage increases to 17.9%, the highest in the country (NM-IBIS 2019b)²⁸. Similarly, childhood food insecurity (0–17 years of age) is also arguably the lowest in the country (24.1%), with Grant County exhibiting a 25% rate.

4. The survey instrument is available online at osf.io/n7y8v

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project was made possible by Western New Mexico University’s Student Research and Professional Development (SRDP) program ($4000) and a New Mexico Alliance for Minority Participation (New Mexico AMP) grant ($1000);Western New Mexico University [SRPD]