Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

Grocery Stores closing really is happening, and really is a problem. And it&#x27;s part of what&#x27;s killing towns - if only because attracting new folk without one is hard.<p>We live in John Day, Or (pop 1700)(County pop 7200, area: about 2x Delaware), which we chose partially because of it&#x27;s supermarket. The next closest supermarket is 90min away. (Walmart: 2h). Not having to commute hours for groceries is a big deal, as is being able to get vegetables of season - and in the rural west these things not a given.<p>When looking to relocate from Seattle to rural town in the west with hospital (wife&#x27;s a doc) and broadband (for me), it soon became obvious that the quality of the food available was going to be the next most important thing on the list (and much harder than broadband). Too many places we looked had long commutes to groceries - or stores with almost no fresh food‡. Most places have no farmers markets or farm stands outside of summer, and early fall. And for us at least - living off of canned and frozen food just isn&#x27;t fun (at least if we&#x27;ve not canned&#x2F;frozen it.)<p>This really restricts immigration which is critical economically when your town&#x27;s youth mainly move to the city as is <i>really</i> common. These small towns are dying a death of a thousand cuts, but loosing your grocery store is a pretty big cut.<p>‡ My favorite story here is once when living in a small town with 2! stores for a short while, we decided to have a dish that called for cooking some spinach. Neither had fresh spinach, nor any substitute - kale say. Neither had any frozen spinach, the second store did have canned &quot;creamed spinach&quot; - and an ingredients list that included both condensed milk and corn syrup. We made something else.

We gave up on farms in the 80s. Agriculture is just another industrial process now.<p>Since we subsidize growing vegetables in the desert and abroad, the market for stuff like vegetables, dairy and meats is hyper-consolidates. There are viable farms on the fringes, but they cannot get capital to grow and cannot compete.<p>I grew up in an area of upstate NY that was a breadbasket at one time, with a rich, diverse agriculture market that is <i>dead</i>. If you&#x27;re a baseball fan and drive to Cooperstown on US Route 20, you can see the communities that you drive through rot away a little more every year.<p>In my town, 12 dairy farms operated in the late 90s (down from 30+ in the 60s). One remains today. Across New York, 60-70% of remaining farms will be bankrupt in the next couple of year.<p>The farm I worked on as a teen was about 750 acres and operated continuously and profitably since an ancestor received a land grant from the Dutch colonial government in the 1600s. Today, they were forced to be hobby farmers -- they board horses and hay to pay the property taxes and work elsewhere. (Due to limited water table, they can&#x27;t subdivide the property enough to make enough money on the land)

This doesn&#x27;t make a lot of sense to me. Stores like Walmart and Dollar stores opened up, and consumer <i>made the choice to shop there rather than at local grocery stores</i>.<p>Sounds like they are getting exactly what they wanted?<p>Reminds me of folks in SF who bemoan the loss of a local butcher store. Sure, they may like buying organic cuts of meat at $15&#x2F;lb, but it&#x27;s obviously most people don&#x27;t, <i>that&#x27;s why those stores went out of business</i>.

Think of it as the end of rural sprawl.<p>Most small towns were built to support surrounding farming and ranching. Once that stopped being labor-intensive, the small towns lost their economic reason for being. Farming today is something like 1.2% of the US workforce. Most of the income in many small towns is now from Social Security, disability, and welfare for the people who didn&#x27;t leave. In time, they will die off. Their town will then go on this list.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...</a>

&quot;Walmart and the like killed local competition.&quot;<p>I disagree (kind of). I grew up in the most rural part of Virginia. There <i>was</i> no competition. We had a local grocery store, for sure; but it sucked. No ethnic food, not even soy sauce. No seafood. No link sausage, three kinds of salad dressing. Maybe four or five green vegetables. It was like a grocery store in some third-world countries I have visited. And there was literally no other option for almost an hour in any direction.<p>There were also no department stores. Nowhere you could buy a paperback, or a toy, or clothing. There was the local supermarket, the dollar store, and the auto goods&#x2F;ammo store. And that was it.<p>Then a grocery store chain moved in. Sure enough, the locally owned grocery store went under. But not because of prices; it was because the chain had actual goods the local consumers wanted to buy. Soy sauce and Thai curry and fresh garlic and actual seafood, and a full produce section.<p>Then Walmart moved in, and suddenly you didn&#x27;t have to drive an hour to go Christmas shopping or to pick up a pair of sneakers.<p>To be sure, there is a lot to dislike about Walmart. I am not arguing that they haven&#x27;t put a lot of mom-and-pop places out of business. But like most things, the whole story is complicated, not least by the fact that many of those mom-and-pop places weren&#x27;t great places to shop when they were in business.

I grew up in a very small town (pop ~300) where I pumped gas in the summers.<p>Guys would roll up running on fumes and ask me to put two dollars of gas in it so they could drive one town over and save a few pennies a gallon on gas.<p>Pretty soon after, the owner of the station stopped selling gas entirely. Yay!<p>If you weren&#x27;t a farmer with your own tanks on site, you were pretty much forced to drive 6 miles to go get gas after that.

I kinda felt like this was an article that had a missing Character, like covering the 2016 election but not mentioning Bernie or Comey.<p>The reality is that Walmart&#x27;s Chinese-sourced non-food goods (including clothing, auto parts, and general household supplies) were priced 50+% cheaper than many non-food (and higher profit) items one could get from a grocery store, once you&#x27;re at Walmart then, well you&#x27;re at Walmart. This, combined with the insane Dollar General growth mentioned likely is why many of the local stores died. I always kinda felt that this kind of marketing positions sometimes actually harm the market, kinda like how Amazon&#x27;s $50 android tablets trashed the non-iPad market by taking all wind out of their sails.<p>Also, for those not familiar, dollar General is not a dollar store as its name implies. They sell cheaper, lower quality items at a markup vs department stores but their secret weapon is incredible organization efficiency with cookie cutter free standing stores that are made simply using cinderblock construction and templated layouts. Their turn around after starting construction to store opening is less than two months at a very low cost in strategically placed places that lack close grocery&#x2F;department stores. If you made a heat map of all the grocers and department stores in a rural area in the northeast with red for &#x27;near grocery store&#x27; and green for &#x27;not near&#x27;, the dollar general onslaught would almost exactly be an inverse map, identifying low income areas. This is even true in suburban areas where driving is required to get to a grocery store, with dollar general&#x27;s popping up in the projects.

The article talks about Illinois as an example, but their main agricultural focus is corn and soybean production, which mostly becomes animal feed. It doesn’t surprise me that it would be hard to buy actual food in a place like that.

We are very fortunate. We live in a very rural, conservative, very northern coastal town of California (next door to Oregon). Our typical shopping day has us first visiting a local farm to purchase Eggs, Cream, Beef, and Pork products all organic and locally grown (Alexandre Family Farms). Our next stop is the farm stand for our local organic farm to get in-season fresh vegetables picked very recently (Ocean Air Farms).<p>After that, our local organic food market which is expanding, having taken over the next door suite&#x27;s lease. We get whatever staples they carry that were not available at the first two stops (Wild Rivers Market).<p>Last, we visit a major grocer, such as Safeway or Fred Meyers to get any items not available at the previous 3. Our shopping basket at this stop is progressively getting lighter and lighter as time goes by, thanks to the increased offerings at the first three shopping stops.<p>Seasonally, we also have two farmer&#x27;s markets locally, one on Wednesdays and one on Saturdays. We stop at those when they are open, getting locally made goods, crafts, herbs, etc.<p>We have a local coffee roaster that feeds my caffeine habit, with some custom roasted beans as well as his normal fare... Wild Rivers Coffee - Thanks, Norris!<p>All in all, we are lucky to be able to stay mostly local.<p>My motto: Small is beautiful, and Think Locally, Act Locally. Supporting our neighbors keeps our commerce locally centered, sustaining (and growing) the health of our community.<p>This said, there is a Wal-Mart in town, as well as a Dollar General and DollarTree stores, so for those of my neighbors who prefer their items from these venues (and their lower prices) they can be accommodated.

So the town in the article is going to be nearly completely unlivable without a vehicle and is about 20 miles from a Walmart.<p>There will be few decent jobs that are walkable, limited medical care, etc, in a town of 1,500, it is just the way it is.<p>Which isn&#x27;t to say that these folks can&#x27;t lament reduced access to food, but the literal availability of food is low there only if you ignore that other circumstances already pretty much force owning a vehicle to live there.

I get the feeling that half the &quot;problem&quot; is bigger stores moving into grocery (e.g. Walmart, Costco, Dollar General) and some serious problems with distributors. If you live in a rural area, then &quot;local&quot; can often mean 45-90 miles. Heck, go to Sam&#x27;s Club or Costco a couple hours away every couple of weeks is not a big deal. The quality of store bought food I can get now as an adult far outstrips what I could get during my childhood. Frankly, Walmart is a whole lot less corrupt than the local grocery place.<p>The interesting part is that the old truth seems to still work, if you have a good butcher, you can survive fairly well.

&quot; About 5 million people in rural areas have to travel 10 miles or more to buy groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture&quot;<p>is that supposed to sound like a lot? It&#x27;s probably a 12 minute drive. I know people who drive 60 miles to and from work every day in Texas without batting an eye.

But has anything changed?<p>60 years ago, you wouldn&#x27;t have been able to get bananas in entire regions (this is easily evidenced by how quickly organic bananas go bad), much less avocados within a 20 minute drive.<p>Even 30 years ago, the selection of fresh fruits and veggies was much more limited. It&#x27;s a big reason for juices by concentrate, dried, and canned goods.<p>There are certainly still local (farmers stands and pick your own (apples, strawberries, tomatoes) in much of the agricultural southeast, and true farmers markets - but would you know about them unless you drive by some country road, or know somebody that runs a farm.

I don’t see the problem. If you are making 200k in one of these places you can afford to hire a couple workers to farm your land and deliver groceries. Problem solved and you are probably still saving money over living in SF or Seattle

Bigger businesses have all the advantages - negotiating with towns for tax incentives; huge overseas buying power for lowering prices; paying a few locals a local (small) wage for work that would pay double in a larger town. Add to that, WalMart &amp; co know to position themselves on the edge of town, near the major highway. So folks in town must choose to go downtown, <i>or</i> go to the edge of town and do all their shopping at WalMart. And folks out of town drive into town, come across WalMart first and generally just stop there and do all their shopping. Starves the downtown almost completely.

Can confirm, live in a rural farming&#x2F;ranching area. Drive past farms (vegetable, grass, ornamental, and commodity) every day. Local grocery store trucks produce in from all over the country. The local grocery stores (Wal Mart, HEB) are also higher priced than even their stores in the nearby suburban area. We drive weekly to Aldi for most of our groceries, or to the bigger, nicer HEB with better food. The local farmer&#x27;s market is overpriced trash &#x2F; antiques and junk. We do have a local friend that gives&#x2F;sells&#x2F;trades eggs with us though.

I am an Air Force brat. We didn&#x27;t live on the base, but it was a bit of a drive to get to the base. All our grocery shopping was done on the base. Since it was a drive, maybe 30 min, we&#x27;d buy 2 weeks of groceries at a time.

During WWII, the government urged urban citizens to plant Victory Gardens so that farmed produce could go to the troops. Home and community plots resulted in an estimated 10 million tons of harvested produce, equal to the commercial production of the time.<p>The cause of these food deserts must be addressed, but in the mean time, I think a return to the Victory Garden would be useful (assuming it doesn&#x27;t work too well and end up tanking agro prices). You just need south or east facing windows, porches or roofs, and you can easily construct (or buy) window boxes and raised beds.

This makes for an interesting comparison to Japan. I’ve lived in rural Tokyo for about two months, and local produce is a thing there. The produce doesn’t need to be sold at a market. The farmers just sell their produce on the roadside, right next to their plots of land.<p>This is also true in some places like semi-rural parts of Dongguan city, Guangdong province of China.

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Walmart and the like killed local competition. There’s a gas station I stop at from time to time in the country with a Walmart next door. It’s insanely busy.<p>I have family in the country and they accept having to drive to get decent groceries. There are seasonal vegetable and fruit stands but you couldn’t get everything you need. A local ranch sells beef but it would be quite expensive to buy year around unless you want a whole or 1&#x2F;2 cow.<p>The county has something like 12,000 residents. It’s about the same population as a 2-3 mile radius is the suburb I live in.<p>To be honest I don’t feel bad for some of these people in the article. They are opposed to the word co-op.<p>Edit: Removing the last 2 sentences of the last paragraph as it’s against the guidelines for flamebait topics. Reading between the lines of the original article I can only assume “speak the the language” is referring to politics.<p>&gt; “It’s ironic because it was farmers who pioneered co-ops. They’re O.K. with ‘community store.’ They’re the same thing, but you’ve got to speak the language.”

You don&#x27;t <i>need</i> a grocery store. You can live off a couple bags of legumes and cereals. People want meat, eggs and milk, though. I have very little sympathy. If it means less animals will have to die for some bommers&#x27; gluttony, then I hope more grocery stores go out of business.

We&#x27;re just a blink away from a new era of autonomous vehicles, which should make most of this a moot point.<p>For all of these small rural communities, it makes sense for each of the local governments to purchase a fleet of vehicles that offer free shipping to its community from distant urban areas and subsidize on a local level.<p>The future of bricks-and-mortar (or cinder blocks and cement) is anyones guess, but frictionless delivery strategies could surprise us all with the remedies and solutions to the old-world logistics problems.