Food access is critical to health and well-being. Living in a food desert means getting food may require a personal vehicle or potentially lengthy and time-consuming travel on transit.

In 2019, 52% of census tracts in Arkansas were food deserts.. This was 14 percentage points higher than the proportion for the nation of 38%. This makes Arkansas ranked 46th in the nation including all 50 states and Washington D.C. In Arkansas, 9 counties had 100% of census tracts considered food deserts. At the other extreme, 4 counties had no food deserts.

In this dataset, a food desert is defined as a census tract where at least 500 people or 33 percent of the population live more than 1 mile from the nearest food store (supermarket, supercenter, or large grocery store) in an urban area or more than 10 miles from such a store in a rural area.