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, 107 census tracts in the region were food deserts, 35% of all tracts in the region. This was similar to the proportion for the state of 33%. Among counties, Monroe had the highest share of food deserts at 45% of census tracts. Livingston County was next at 33% of tracts. At the other extreme, Yates County had no food deserts and Genesee had just 1, or 7% of all its tracts.

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.