DGI Food Access · SB 254 · Cycles 1–5

Delaware Grocery Initiative grant awards and food-access indicators, by census tract.

SB 254 (2024) created the Delaware Grocery Initiative to expand healthy-food access, with awards administered by the Division of Small Business in partnership with the DE Council on Farm & Food Policy. This dashboard maps the Cycle 5 grant awards alongside food-access layers: the USDA low-income/low-access (LILA) definition, the SB 254 statutory food-desert definition, SNAP retailers, and DART transit routes. Built from the DSB awardee list and public geospatial records.

How to read this. These are Delaware Grocery Initiative grant awards recorded in the Division of Small Business Winner Summary, shown without interpretation. Cycle 5 awards are listed as pending-disbursement until DSB confirms each payment. The food-insecurity figures come from Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap, an annual county-level estimate, not a per-tract count. The map layers show where food-access indicators and grant awards fall geographically; any overlap between them is a matter of record, not a judgment about whether funding is adequate or well-placed. First State Lens draws no conclusions. We show you the data; you decide.

Cycle 5 Awarded

$712,500/ 28 orgs

Awarded May 2026 to 28 organizations across New Castle, Kent & Sussex, listed as pending-disbursement until DSB confirms each payment.

SOURCE · DSB WINNER SUMMARY · MAY 2026

Prior Cycles (1–4 + 2025)

~$2.15M

39 projects through Cycle 4 (~$1.9M) plus 22 organizations in the July 2025 round (~$250K), as reported by the state.

SOURCE · DSB / news.delaware.gov

Delawareans Food Insecure

125,370/ 12.6%

Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap 2025 estimate (2023 data), a modeled county-level figure for Delaware.

SOURCE · FEEDING AMERICA · MMG 2025

Children Food Insecure

40,620/ 19.7%

Included in the statewide figure above, per the same Map the Meal Gap 2025 release.

SOURCE · FEEDING AMERICA · MMG 2025

Tract-Level Deployment Map

Live · MapLibre + static GeoJSON

Food-access tracts SNAP retailers DART transit Senate District 2

Loading layers…

Tract fill — ■ SB 254-effective · ■ low-income · ■ USDA LILA food desert

Disbursement Trajectory

Cycles 1–5 · 2023 → 2026

Dollars awarded by cycle

Cycle 5 awarded May 2026: $712,500 across 28 organizations (DSB Winner Summary). Per-grantee disbursement is tracked as DSB confirms it.

Cumulative deployed dollars

Sum across cycles. Disbursed funding tops out at $2.15M; the dashed segment shows Cycle 5's $712,500 award climbing toward ~$2.86M as it disburses.

Two Definitions of "Food Desert"

USDA LILA × SB 254 cross-walk

USDA LILA (federal)

Low-Income, Low-Access. Census-tract level, USDA Food Access Research Atlas.

Urban access1.0 mi to supermarket

Rural access10 mi to supermarket

Low-incomePoverty ≥20% OR MFI ≤80%

Eligible sourceSupermarket / large grocery

SB 254 (statute)

Title 16 Ch. 36. Statute is unit-agnostic; dashboard interprets at tract level.

Urban access0.5 mi to food resource

Rural access10 mi (same as LILA)

Low-income"Typically lower-income" (qualitative)

Eligible sourcesPantries, corner stores, specialty grocers, +

Cross-walk consequence: in urban Delaware (Wilmington especially), SB 254-effective tracts will generally be a superset of USDA LILA tracts because the 0.5-mi threshold is more restrictive than 1.0-mi. The broader "food resource" denominator partially offsets this — pantries and corner stores count under SB 254 but not under USDA LILA. In rural Sussex, the two definitions converge at the 10-mi threshold. The dashboard ships both as filterable layers; methodology v0.2.0 §Q6 specifies the precise tract-level rule.

Methodology & Sources

Public, citable

Source	Used For	Verified
DSB · Delaware Grocery Initiative business.delaware.gov · news.delaware.gov	Cycle 1–4 grantee list, 2025 round (22 awardees, $250K), Cycle 5 application timeline ($700K)	2026.05.11
Map the Meal Gap 2025 feedingamerica.org · 2023 data	Food-insecurity denominator (state and county); 2-year structural lag	2026.05.11
Senate Bill 254 (Title 16, Ch. 36) legis.delaware.gov · delcode.delaware.gov	SB 254 statutory food-desert definition, "food resource" / "specialty grocer" terms	2026.05.11
USDA Food Access Research Atlas ers.usda.gov	LILA tract layer (1.0 mi urban / 10 mi rural; poverty / MFI low-income criterion)	2026.05.11
USDA SNAP Retailer Locator usda.gov	SNAP-retailer point layer; cross-referenced with DE Dept of Agriculture & DE Council on Farm & Food Policy	2026.05.11
U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder geocoding.geo.census.gov	Primary geocoder for grantee storefronts; returns 2020 tract directly	2026.05.11
DPH My Healthy Community myhealthycommunity.dhss.delaware.gov	Tract-level food insecurity, diabetes, obesity overlays (DPH MHC)	2026.05.11
Delaware Open Data Portal data.delaware.gov	Food Bank of Delaware Meal Gaps (cross-validation against MMG)	2026.05.11
FirstMap firstmap.delaware.gov · 2022 redistricting plan	SD2 boundary (Wilmington), county boundaries, base map	2026.05.11
ACS 5-year estimates census.gov · block-group + tract	Population weighting layer for areal interpolation; race / income overlay	2026.05.11

Calculation notes: Statewide mean ($17.15 per food-insecure resident) = $2.15M deployed ÷ 125,370 food-insecure individuals. County-level food insecurity figures: Sussex (32,050 / 13.3%) is confirmed from MMG 2025; New Castle and Kent are scaffold placeholders pending the bulk ETL pull. Tract-level distribution requires population-weighted areal interpolation (methodology v0.2.0 §Q3) using ACS block-group population as the weighting layer. Both USDA LILA and SB 254-effective tract layers ship; the 50% population threshold for SB 254-effective is tunable in the bulk-data ETL. Full methodology in /methodology/dgi-food-access-kpi-definitions.md.