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I grew up in a rural area and I think I can count on 1 hand how many times I saw a farm stand. People do not shop at farm stands and farmers markets in rural areas that often.

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I'm in a very small town right now and it's a reasonable driving distance from farms. It looks to me like the average farm stand is simply some clever person buying crates of produce at the wholesaler.

No shortage of healthy food at the local grocery stores of course.

I expect that people who wave their arms about 'food deserts' could probably stand to visit either small towns or urban areas and form an opinion based on actual experience.

Conjecture here because I don't honestly know, but I think some of what you're observing might just be that food deserts are very regional. If you look at this image [1] you can see that it's basically just the Southeast/Appalachia. Rural Midwest, West, etc don't seem to have this issue nearly as much.

[1] https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4565435/food_deserts_map.jpg

What area do you live in? I've had the opposite experience in a few states.

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