Review of Food Access in the Shade of Critical Times

Abstract

Food security is a condition where people at all times have physical, economic, and social access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Even though the world produces enough food for all humans, we have people with low access to food due to several socioeconomic variables, and this lack of food access affects their lives and health in return. On regular days, physical access to food outlets is limited by several variables and that creates categories in food access areas. In extreme weather events, the accessibility becomes more limited due to the impact on mobility, and interruption to electricity or transportation systems. These weather events increase due to climate change, and the future is highly unpredictable. The cumulative effect of climate change and pandemics increases the risk of complicated circumstances for food security. COVID-19 pandemic is considered the largest epidemic, and the onset of these large-scale future epidemics is predicted to be inevitable. This chapter will describe the extent of food access categories in Guilford county of North Carolina pre-COVID-19, and the influence of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic on the food-access distribution.