26 ms·

Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

188 points by kilovoltaire 7y ago

chabes 7y ago
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.
- kasey_junk 7y ago
  It also mentions greens & beef being agricultural output. They then mention a Florida town with the same issue.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  I can only see the first two paragraphs, but it is apparently about Winchester Illinois which is in Scott County. According to Wikipedia, it now has a smaller population than when the county was created just prior to 1840. Less than 5000 people are supporting the costs of administering an entire county. It should be merged back into Morgan County, which appears to have a stable population at least. A lot of places in Illinois are heavily burdened by the sheer number of governmental units that they pay taxes to support. Consolidation would dramatically improve the situation and help bring a more vibrant economy that can support things like grocery stores.
- Merrill 7y ago
  Illinois isn't particularly sparsely populated compared with the rural areas of the Dakotas and Montana. It's not uncommon to drive over 20 miles for groceries. Closer towns might have a convenience/general store, but prices will be high and selection minimal. You might make the trip only every other week, though. People tend to have freezers and root cellars to store the food they raise themselves. Canning, sadly, seems to be a lost art.
Spooky23 7y ago
We gave up on farms in the 80s. Agriculture is just another industrial process now. 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. I grew up in an area of upstate NY that was a breadbasket at one time, with a rich, diverse agriculture market that is dead. If you'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. 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. 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't subdivide the property enough to make enough money on the land)
- kkarakk 7y ago
  I really do think automation and the logical efficiences of getting a robot to transport produce from 200 miles away vs 20000 miles away will fix this problem. Farms will come back, they will just be run by corporations instead.
  - archgoon 7y ago
    > Farms will come back, they will just be run by corporations instead. I believe that is already the case. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/06/state-of-american-farming-big-producers-dominate-food-production.html https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/06/state-of-american-farming-bi...
- eranima 7y ago
  I'm from upstate NY, and the loss of "breadbasket" status was great for the local ecology. When we were the breadbasket of the country (when the country was much younger), all the forests were cut down and erosion and water quality were a much bigger issue.
AgloeDreams 7y ago
I kinda felt like this was an article that had a missing Character, like covering the 2016 election but not mentioning Bernie or Comey. The reality is that Walmart'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're at Walmart then, well you'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's $50 android tablets trashed the non-iPad market by taking all wind out of their sails. 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/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 'near grocery store' and green for 'not near', 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's popping up in the projects.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  It would seem the issue is with low incomes rather than with Dollar General.
  - AgloeDreams 7y ago
    Oh for sure, but stores focused on bringing high margin cheap imported goods and base minimum wage jobs into communities that formerly bought locally produced goods does not exactly help this problem. Dollar General's expansion would burn if the minimum wage were raised.
    - war1025 7y ago
refurb 7y ago
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Stores like Walmart and Dollar stores opened up, and consumer made the choice to shop there rather than at local grocery stores. Sounds like they are getting exactly what they wanted? 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/lb, but it's obviously most people don't, that's why those stores went out of business.
- vkou 7y ago
  A homeless heroin addict is also getting exactly what he wants from his dealer. Sometimes, what you want in the short-term is not what's good for you in the long-term.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Wow! So shopping at Walmart is the same as heroin addiction? Your attitude is just the old paternalistic "You're too stupid to know what's best for you, so I'm going to force you to make the right decision for you." Thank god we don't live in a country where that's broadly supported.
    - vkou 7y ago
      No, that's not the point that I'm making. The point that I am making is that platitudes about 'The people asked for it, now they got it, therefore we have optimized overall good' are poor arguments. Satisfying wants don't always result in locally, or globally optimal outcomes.
      - refurb 7y ago
        How is this not optimized for the greater good? Because some people miss their local grocery store?
        jschwartzi 7y ago
        What is the greater good in your mind? What end would you like to see here?
fnordfnordfnord 7y ago
Can confirm, live in a rural farming/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's market is overpriced trash / antiques and junk. We do have a local friend that gives/sells/trades eggs with us though.
- throwaway0xb 7y ago
  I grew up in rural Texas and when I visit back home I've noticed the farm stands are considerably worse than what I remember them being growing up. On the other hand I live in rural New England now and the farm stands here are excellent, albeit strictly seasonal.
aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
We're just a blink away from a new era of autonomous vehicles, which should make most of this a moot point. 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. 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.
- aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
  If its the costs that are preventing the consumers from getting the products they desire, the markets should find a way to overcome the obstacles using the new tools and resources available as the come online. I've heard it called a warehouse on wheels, but it will be interesting to see how the delivery economy evolves.
- aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
  The karma on this is going up and down today. Dunno what thats all about. Perhaps I'm a little more optimistic about logistics than most, but in all likelyhood, we'll see an exodus from the urban areas that will drive the growth of same day/next day shipping to these smaller communities. That would fix the "retail deserts" explained in the article and in the comments faster than shining up the facade of small town retail and hoping for the best.
maxerickson 7y ago
So the town in the article is going to be nearly completely unlivable without a vehicle and is about 20 miles from a Walmart. 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. Which isn't to say that these folks can'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.
- bobobooey 7y ago
  Yes, this exists. A majority of my family lives in Ohio, and the town they live in is about 20 miles to the nearest Walmart.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    Can you explain what you mean by "this"?
    - bobobooey 7y ago
      Towns that are unliveable without a car.
      - TulliusCicero 7y ago
        "What is 'most cities in the US', Trebek?" But it doesn't have to be that way. I'm in Munich now, and little Bavarian towns of 10k or less are nearly always much more walkable than US cities 20x their size.
        RandomTisk 7y ago
        I see this point of view a lot, but it's got one major flaw: A lot of my trips to the grochery store/Costco/Sams Club include far more things than I can carry. The idea of not owning a car sounds like the exact opposite of a paradise to me.
wil421 7y ago
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. 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 1/2 cow. 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. To be honest I don’t feel bad for some of these people in the article. They are opposed to the word co-op. 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. > “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.”
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > To be honest I don’t feel bad for some of these people in the article. They are opposed to the word co-op. I am assuming it’s too liberal for them. It’s the same with my family in the country. Lots of people vote against “socialism” and then collect Medicade, social security and disability. You don't feel bad for them because you've speculatively determined they're all hypocrites? Glad to see casual bigotry is acceptable on HN. People like you are the problem, you are so arrogant as to assume that your speculation is correct and above reproach, and that you can not only judge by condemn someone based on your errant speculation. And you sit and defend your own bigotry with pride!
  - pstuart 7y ago
    Not OP. It's more like they're willfully choosing to suffer. So in that case, enjoy your misery!
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      > It's more like they're willfully choosing to suffer. So in that case, enjoy your misery! So, you're going to speculatively stereotype an entire group of people and condemn them based on your own hunch as to their politics and station in life. While you're certainly entitled to an opinion, nothing about your entitlement precludes that opinion being a bigoted one. What a bigoted existence. > Yea I am stereotyping people based on my personal experience and what the author echos in the article. I’m in the Deep South and the article spoke about Illinois. Pretty far away but also the same mindsets. Ah yes, the classically conservative Illinois which shares so much in common with the Deep South.
raintrees 7y ago
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). After that, our local organic food market which is expanding, having taken over the next door suite's lease. We get whatever staples they carry that were not available at the first two stops (Wild Rivers Market). 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. Seasonally, we also have two farmer'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. 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! All in all, we are lucky to be able to stay mostly local. 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. 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.
- bpiche 7y ago
  Crescent City?
  - raintrees 7y ago
    Yep. A few miles north of town. Beautiful area, mostly nice people. The few who are not are easy to avoid :)
- prawn 7y ago
  This is time, effort and money people tend to find difficult to allocate. Do they spend their day off across four locations going shopping and neglect their yard or catching up with friends? It's possible to do it all, but easier to convince yourself you can't because you're tired, saving money, stressed from work/kids/etc.
smileysteve 7y ago
But has anything changed? 60 years ago, you wouldn'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. Even 30 years ago, the selection of fresh fruits and veggies was much more limited. It's a big reason for juices by concentrate, dried, and canned goods. 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.
GlenTheMachine 7y ago
"Walmart and the like killed local competition." I disagree (kind of). I grew up in the most rural part of Virginia. There was 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. 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/ammo store. And that was it. 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. Then Walmart moved in, and suddenly you didn't have to drive an hour to go Christmas shopping or to pick up a pair of sneakers. To be sure, there is a lot to dislike about Walmart. I am not arguing that they haven'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't great places to shop when they were in business.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  The mom-and-pop stores cannot reasonably compete with Walmart or any other chain store. Their suppliers charge more because they lack the volume for the discounts the big stores charge, they lack the skills/manpower/IT to purchase, stock and maintain the thousands of products in a big store, and last but not least mom-and-pop stores don't get the massive tax breaks and other incentives/bribes that the state provides for huge stores.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    Can't such stores get together and create a co-op with a set of stores in the same county/state or even country in order to get reliable supplies and better rates?
    - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
nmcfarl 7y ago
Grocery Stores closing really is happening, and really is a problem. And it's part of what's killing towns - if only because attracting new folk without one is hard. We live in John Day, Or (pop 1700)(County pop 7200, area: about 2x Delaware), which we chose partially because of it'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. When looking to relocate from Seattle to rural town in the west with hospital (wife'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't fun (at least if we've not canned/frozen it.) This really restricts immigration which is critical economically when your town's youth mainly move to the city as is really common. These small towns are dying a death of a thousand cuts, but loosing your grocery store is a pretty big cut. ‡ 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 "creamed spinach" - and an ingredients list that included both condensed milk and corn syrup. We made something else.
- genieyclo 7y ago
  Out of curiosity: why did you choose to live in such a remote/rural place?
  - stevehawk 7y ago
    As a nerd who also married a doctor and went rural - 1) Doctors tend to make more money in rural areas. Hospitals/practices tend to offer higher salaries/bonuses/etc in order to draw talent. My wife makes roughly 50% more in an area of 30,000 people (mind you, we're talking a pretty large geographic area) than she would in Miami. 2) Money goes further. My 4500sq ft home on 1.2 acres of land is worth considerably less than my previous 1700sq ft townhome on .1 acre of land back in northern Virginia near DC. personal opinion: 3) Some of us just don't want to live in a city. A weekend trip to a city a couple of times a year is enough for me.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/SOD24 http://archive.is/SOD24
uuri8n 7y ago
Edit: to be clear the discourse on this forum has no political weight or general social value, the effort behind the score keeping is wasted. But lemmings gonna lemming on that front so keep pointlessly downvoting. I’m sure after enough of them society will be healed from this affront People should get out and enjoy ethnic food and shit anyway This “set up the world so everything is delivered close to me” is the real problem the economy seems keen to ignore. We’re against socialism I guess but not against believing we’re owed convenient access to every experience out there? Why do we have to politically defer to an economy that provides such lazy effort to trying pad Thai?
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Did you just interpret "I had to drive for an hour each way to buy clothes or decent vegetables" as "I demand ready access to every product and experience there is" and then call the commenter a socialist?
  - uuri8n 7y ago
    No Did you just cherry pick part of what they wrote to complain at me? As if the scolding of some rando will appropriately make me reconsider? I told the commenter their complaining about not having easy access to ethnic food in the middle of nowhere is not an obligation of a society Basic food and clothes and healthcare sure, I mean most of the those communities on the whole vote for candidates that deprive others of those things though so really maybe they should pull themselves up by their boot straps as they say a bit more anyway?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- nullwarp 7y ago
  Oh yeah that would be great if we could have afforded it. Not everyone lived in a world where they could "get out and enjoy ethnic food" and some having it local and have the ability to make it yourself was the only option. Your comment comes off very condescending.
gerbilly 7y ago
I grew up in a very small town (pop ~300) where I pumped gas in the summers. 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. Pretty soon after, the owner of the station stopped selling gas entirely. Yay! If you weren't a farmer with your own tanks on site, you were pretty much forced to drive 6 miles to go get gas after that.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  6mi in the context of places where a town population is in the hundreds really isn't much at all. No wonder people were buying just enough to get to the cheap station. I drive 2mi to get gas and that's in a city.
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    This way of thinking would make sense if the only thing that mattered in life was money.
Animats 7y ago
Think of it as the end of rural sprawl. 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't leave. In time, they will die off. Their town will then go on this list.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...
- tomohawk 7y ago
  Sprawl is non-contiguous growth - subdividing land for housing that is not adjacent to already subdivided land. These towns are not that. In most cases, they are where they were planned to be based on euclidian zoning. A lot of the small towns are gone. The towns that used to be medium sized are now small and its hard to get services and groceries there. A lot of these towns would be viable if there was decent internet. Missouri Start Quilt Co started in a small town and used the available buildings and infrastructure to jump start their business. Would not have been possible without good internet. https://www.missouriquiltco.com/content/aboutus https://www.missouriquiltco.com/content/aboutus
- Aperocky 7y ago
  There need to be towns in picturesque locations (Been to western Wyoming, it's basically that non-stop) supported by industry other than agriculture. The ability to remote work should draw a subset of developers and other workers into the area as long as the corresponding infrastructure has been met. Especially for self contracting / employed software engineers.
  - dboreham 7y ago
    This happens. Not everywhere because as you say it needs basic infrastructure: e.g a Costco within 1h, jet airport within 2h, 100Mbit connectivity, and some other things like neighbors you'd want to talk to. There are plenty of software developers around here in southwest Montana.
  - 7y ago
WalterBright 7y ago
I am an Air Force brat. We didn'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'd buy 2 weeks of groceries at a time.
zelly 7y ago
You don't need 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' gluttony, then I hope more grocery stores go out of business.
rdtwo 7y ago
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
peterwwillis 7y ago
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. 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'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.
- dbcurtis 7y ago
  I suggest you do the math. My mother was a fanatical gardener and food preserver, so I know full well how much land it takes to grow enough produce to feed a family for a year from a season's frozen/canned produce. I personally did a lot of literal spade work (and harvest work) to make it happen. A couple of window boxes will about cover 1/4 of your need for herbs(1). I am not sure how big mom's gardens (plural) were, but I would guess an acre or so all together. Really, it isn't hard to do the math. There are a zillion books on gardening that address space planning starting from your desired yield estimate. It isn't difficult math -- my mom taught it to a herd of 4-H kids over the years, and as the 4-H garden judge at the county fair expected your notebook to include the computations. So, I encourage you to grow a Victory Garden. Tell us how that works out for you. I guarantee that at least some of the food that you grow will be astoundingly good. Not everyone finds the process satisfying, though. The ironic thing is that the farm country we are talking about in this thread is exactly where mom's gardens were, and gardens were common in the day. But not any more -- people would rather work at Walmart, and buy their canned corn there, than grow it and can it themselves. The rural economy has changed -- at least the farm country economy -- because it is rare to be able to make a living full-time farming any more. (1) Never trust a sentence with the word "just" in it.
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    The "math" can be quite complex, because estimates range anywhere from 1/4 acre to feed a family of four to 1 acre to feed 1 person. It depends on how intensely the land is managed, climate zone, caloric requirements, etc. I pack my veggies in much closer rows than you're supposed to, but they do fine. It's funny, I built one 12"x48" window box just for herbs and I barely use them! I have oregano, thyme, thai basil, mint, lavender, bee balm, parsely, cilantro, even green onions, and I kind of forget they're there. A shaker of dried herbs provence works for me most of the time.
protomyth 7y ago
I get the feeling that half the "problem" 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 "local" can often mean 45-90 miles. Heck, go to Sam'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. The interesting part is that the old truth seems to still work, if you have a good butcher, you can survive fairly well.
- beauzero 7y ago
  This is true. We drive 30 minutes to a butcher in Roanoke, AL and it is seriously packed on a Saturday. Reasonable good meat and local flash frozen southern vegetables.
code_duck 7y ago
" About 5 million people in rural areas have to travel 10 miles or more to buy groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture" is that supposed to sound like a lot? It'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.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Agreed. It can take that long living in town, to drive a mile to the grocery store. I drive 12 miles to the edge of town, rarely seeing another car until I'm almost there, to a grocery on the edge of town. Takes 15 minutes
- adrianN 7y ago
  It's a lot for people who can't drive, like children or the elderly.
  - code_duck 7y ago
    I don't see how it would help, then, if it were closer, like 2 miles? What would they do, instead not be able to walk there?
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Two miles is still really far. That grocery density would mean only ten grocers or so in a major city like Berlin. Small towns should be able to achieve much shorter distances . Nevertheless, 2 miles is well within the ability of people to cycle. Elderly people with poor balance can use electric tricycles.
      - code_duck 7y ago
        The topic was not major cities. It's rural areas. It's very unrealistic for them to be expected to be even as dense as one in every two miles, when in many cases there might only be four houses or less in a one mile stretch. It seems unlikely that people who are physically unable to drive would be walking that distance or using electric tricycles. I would think that what is going to be helpful for these people is grocery delivery service. Also, children are not typically expected to be responsible for grocery shopping.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
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 & co know to position themselves on the edge of town, near the major highway. So folks in town must choose to go downtown, or 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.
k_sze 7y ago
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. This is also true in some places like semi-rural parts of Dongguan city, Guangdong province of China.
- seisvelas 7y ago
  >I’ve lived in rural Tokyo Did you mean to say rural Japan?
  - k_sze 7y ago
    No, I really mean rural Tokyo. Tokyo is BIG and not all wards are like Shinjuku/Chuo.

188 points by kilovoltaire 7y ago

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.

kasey_junk 7y ago
It also mentions greens & beef being agricultural output. They then mention a Florida town with the same issue.
OrangeMango 7y ago
I can only see the first two paragraphs, but it is apparently about Winchester Illinois which is in Scott County. According to Wikipedia, it now has a smaller population than when the county was created just prior to 1840. Less than 5000 people are supporting the costs of administering an entire county. It should be merged back into Morgan County, which appears to have a stable population at least. A lot of places in Illinois are heavily burdened by the sheer number of governmental units that they pay taxes to support. Consolidation would dramatically improve the situation and help bring a more vibrant economy that can support things like grocery stores.
Merrill 7y ago
Illinois isn't particularly sparsely populated compared with the rural areas of the Dakotas and Montana. It's not uncommon to drive over 20 miles for groceries. Closer towns might have a convenience/general store, but prices will be high and selection minimal. You might make the trip only every other week, though. People tend to have freezers and root cellars to store the food they raise themselves. Canning, sadly, seems to be a lost art.

Spooky23 7y ago

We gave up on farms in the 80s. Agriculture is just another industrial process now. 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. I grew up in an area of upstate NY that was a breadbasket at one time, with a rich, diverse agriculture market that is dead. If you'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. 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. 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't subdivide the property enough to make enough money on the land)

kkarakk 7y ago
I really do think automation and the logical efficiences of getting a robot to transport produce from 200 miles away vs 20000 miles away will fix this problem. Farms will come back, they will just be run by corporations instead.
- archgoon 7y ago
  > Farms will come back, they will just be run by corporations instead. I believe that is already the case. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/06/state-of-american-farming-big-producers-dominate-food-production.html https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/06/state-of-american-farming-bi...
eranima 7y ago
I'm from upstate NY, and the loss of "breadbasket" status was great for the local ecology. When we were the breadbasket of the country (when the country was much younger), all the forests were cut down and erosion and water quality were a much bigger issue.

AgloeDreams 7y ago

I kinda felt like this was an article that had a missing Character, like covering the 2016 election but not mentioning Bernie or Comey. The reality is that Walmart'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're at Walmart then, well you'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's $50 android tablets trashed the non-iPad market by taking all wind out of their sails. 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/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 'near grocery store' and green for 'not near', 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's popping up in the projects.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
It would seem the issue is with low incomes rather than with Dollar General.
- AgloeDreams 7y ago
  Oh for sure, but stores focused on bringing high margin cheap imported goods and base minimum wage jobs into communities that formerly bought locally produced goods does not exactly help this problem. Dollar General's expansion would burn if the minimum wage were raised.
  - war1025 7y ago

refurb 7y ago

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Stores like Walmart and Dollar stores opened up, and consumer made the choice to shop there rather than at local grocery stores. Sounds like they are getting exactly what they wanted? 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/lb, but it's obviously most people don't, that's why those stores went out of business.

vkou 7y ago
A homeless heroin addict is also getting exactly what he wants from his dealer. Sometimes, what you want in the short-term is not what's good for you in the long-term.
- refurb 7y ago
  Wow! So shopping at Walmart is the same as heroin addiction? Your attitude is just the old paternalistic "You're too stupid to know what's best for you, so I'm going to force you to make the right decision for you." Thank god we don't live in a country where that's broadly supported.
  - vkou 7y ago
    No, that's not the point that I'm making. The point that I am making is that platitudes about 'The people asked for it, now they got it, therefore we have optimized overall good' are poor arguments. Satisfying wants don't always result in locally, or globally optimal outcomes.
    - refurb 7y ago
      How is this not optimized for the greater good? Because some people miss their local grocery store?
      - jschwartzi 7y ago
        What is the greater good in your mind? What end would you like to see here?

fnordfnordfnord 7y ago

Can confirm, live in a rural farming/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's market is overpriced trash / antiques and junk. We do have a local friend that gives/sells/trades eggs with us though.

throwaway0xb 7y ago
I grew up in rural Texas and when I visit back home I've noticed the farm stands are considerably worse than what I remember them being growing up. On the other hand I live in rural New England now and the farm stands here are excellent, albeit strictly seasonal.

aSplash0fDerp 7y ago

We're just a blink away from a new era of autonomous vehicles, which should make most of this a moot point. 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. 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.

aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
If its the costs that are preventing the consumers from getting the products they desire, the markets should find a way to overcome the obstacles using the new tools and resources available as the come online. I've heard it called a warehouse on wheels, but it will be interesting to see how the delivery economy evolves.
aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
The karma on this is going up and down today. Dunno what thats all about. Perhaps I'm a little more optimistic about logistics than most, but in all likelyhood, we'll see an exodus from the urban areas that will drive the growth of same day/next day shipping to these smaller communities. That would fix the "retail deserts" explained in the article and in the comments faster than shining up the facade of small town retail and hoping for the best.

maxerickson 7y ago

So the town in the article is going to be nearly completely unlivable without a vehicle and is about 20 miles from a Walmart. 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. Which isn't to say that these folks can'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.

bobobooey 7y ago
Yes, this exists. A majority of my family lives in Ohio, and the town they live in is about 20 miles to the nearest Walmart.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Can you explain what you mean by "this"?
  - bobobooey 7y ago
    Towns that are unliveable without a car.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      "What is 'most cities in the US', Trebek?" But it doesn't have to be that way. I'm in Munich now, and little Bavarian towns of 10k or less are nearly always much more walkable than US cities 20x their size.
      - RandomTisk 7y ago
        I see this point of view a lot, but it's got one major flaw: A lot of my trips to the grochery store/Costco/Sams Club include far more things than I can carry. The idea of not owning a car sounds like the exact opposite of a paradise to me.

wil421 7y ago

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. 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 1/2 cow. 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. To be honest I don’t feel bad for some of these people in the article. They are opposed to the word co-op. 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. > “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.”

mieseratte 7y ago
> To be honest I don’t feel bad for some of these people in the article. They are opposed to the word co-op. I am assuming it’s too liberal for them. It’s the same with my family in the country. Lots of people vote against “socialism” and then collect Medicade, social security and disability. You don't feel bad for them because you've speculatively determined they're all hypocrites? Glad to see casual bigotry is acceptable on HN. People like you are the problem, you are so arrogant as to assume that your speculation is correct and above reproach, and that you can not only judge by condemn someone based on your errant speculation. And you sit and defend your own bigotry with pride!
- pstuart 7y ago
  Not OP. It's more like they're willfully choosing to suffer. So in that case, enjoy your misery!
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    > It's more like they're willfully choosing to suffer. So in that case, enjoy your misery! So, you're going to speculatively stereotype an entire group of people and condemn them based on your own hunch as to their politics and station in life. While you're certainly entitled to an opinion, nothing about your entitlement precludes that opinion being a bigoted one. What a bigoted existence. > Yea I am stereotyping people based on my personal experience and what the author echos in the article. I’m in the Deep South and the article spoke about Illinois. Pretty far away but also the same mindsets. Ah yes, the classically conservative Illinois which shares so much in common with the Deep South.

raintrees 7y ago

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). After that, our local organic food market which is expanding, having taken over the next door suite's lease. We get whatever staples they carry that were not available at the first two stops (Wild Rivers Market). 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. Seasonally, we also have two farmer'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. 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! All in all, we are lucky to be able to stay mostly local. 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. 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.

bpiche 7y ago
Crescent City?
- raintrees 7y ago
  Yep. A few miles north of town. Beautiful area, mostly nice people. The few who are not are easy to avoid :)
prawn 7y ago
This is time, effort and money people tend to find difficult to allocate. Do they spend their day off across four locations going shopping and neglect their yard or catching up with friends? It's possible to do it all, but easier to convince yourself you can't because you're tired, saving money, stressed from work/kids/etc.

smileysteve 7y ago

But has anything changed? 60 years ago, you wouldn'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. Even 30 years ago, the selection of fresh fruits and veggies was much more limited. It's a big reason for juices by concentrate, dried, and canned goods. 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.

GlenTheMachine 7y ago

"Walmart and the like killed local competition." I disagree (kind of). I grew up in the most rural part of Virginia. There was 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. 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/ammo store. And that was it. 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. Then Walmart moved in, and suddenly you didn't have to drive an hour to go Christmas shopping or to pick up a pair of sneakers. To be sure, there is a lot to dislike about Walmart. I am not arguing that they haven'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't great places to shop when they were in business.

mschuster91 7y ago
The mom-and-pop stores cannot reasonably compete with Walmart or any other chain store. Their suppliers charge more because they lack the volume for the discounts the big stores charge, they lack the skills/manpower/IT to purchase, stock and maintain the thousands of products in a big store, and last but not least mom-and-pop stores don't get the massive tax breaks and other incentives/bribes that the state provides for huge stores.
- belltaco 7y ago
  Can't such stores get together and create a co-op with a set of stores in the same county/state or even country in order to get reliable supplies and better rates?
  - GlenTheMachine 7y ago

nmcfarl 7y ago

Grocery Stores closing really is happening, and really is a problem. And it's part of what's killing towns - if only because attracting new folk without one is hard. We live in John Day, Or (pop 1700)(County pop 7200, area: about 2x Delaware), which we chose partially because of it'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. When looking to relocate from Seattle to rural town in the west with hospital (wife'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't fun (at least if we've not canned/frozen it.) This really restricts immigration which is critical economically when your town's youth mainly move to the city as is really common. These small towns are dying a death of a thousand cuts, but loosing your grocery store is a pretty big cut. ‡ 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 "creamed spinach" - and an ingredients list that included both condensed milk and corn syrup. We made something else.

genieyclo 7y ago
Out of curiosity: why did you choose to live in such a remote/rural place?
- stevehawk 7y ago
  As a nerd who also married a doctor and went rural - 1) Doctors tend to make more money in rural areas. Hospitals/practices tend to offer higher salaries/bonuses/etc in order to draw talent. My wife makes roughly 50% more in an area of 30,000 people (mind you, we're talking a pretty large geographic area) than she would in Miami. 2) Money goes further. My 4500sq ft home on 1.2 acres of land is worth considerably less than my previous 1700sq ft townhome on .1 acre of land back in northern Virginia near DC. personal opinion: 3) Some of us just don't want to live in a city. A weekend trip to a city a couple of times a year is enough for me.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/SOD24 http://archive.is/SOD24

uuri8n 7y ago

Edit: to be clear the discourse on this forum has no political weight or general social value, the effort behind the score keeping is wasted. But lemmings gonna lemming on that front so keep pointlessly downvoting. I’m sure after enough of them society will be healed from this affront People should get out and enjoy ethnic food and shit anyway This “set up the world so everything is delivered close to me” is the real problem the economy seems keen to ignore. We’re against socialism I guess but not against believing we’re owed convenient access to every experience out there? Why do we have to politically defer to an economy that provides such lazy effort to trying pad Thai?

PhasmaFelis 7y ago
Did you just interpret "I had to drive for an hour each way to buy clothes or decent vegetables" as "I demand ready access to every product and experience there is" and then call the commenter a socialist?
- uuri8n 7y ago
  No Did you just cherry pick part of what they wrote to complain at me? As if the scolding of some rando will appropriately make me reconsider? I told the commenter their complaining about not having easy access to ethnic food in the middle of nowhere is not an obligation of a society Basic food and clothes and healthcare sure, I mean most of the those communities on the whole vote for candidates that deprive others of those things though so really maybe they should pull themselves up by their boot straps as they say a bit more anyway?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
nullwarp 7y ago
Oh yeah that would be great if we could have afforded it. Not everyone lived in a world where they could "get out and enjoy ethnic food" and some having it local and have the ability to make it yourself was the only option. Your comment comes off very condescending.

gerbilly 7y ago

I grew up in a very small town (pop ~300) where I pumped gas in the summers. 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. Pretty soon after, the owner of the station stopped selling gas entirely. Yay! If you weren't a farmer with your own tanks on site, you were pretty much forced to drive 6 miles to go get gas after that.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
6mi in the context of places where a town population is in the hundreds really isn't much at all. No wonder people were buying just enough to get to the cheap station. I drive 2mi to get gas and that's in a city.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  This way of thinking would make sense if the only thing that mattered in life was money.

Animats 7y ago

Think of it as the end of rural sprawl. 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't leave. In time, they will die off. Their town will then go on this list.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...

tomohawk 7y ago
Sprawl is non-contiguous growth - subdividing land for housing that is not adjacent to already subdivided land. These towns are not that. In most cases, they are where they were planned to be based on euclidian zoning. A lot of the small towns are gone. The towns that used to be medium sized are now small and its hard to get services and groceries there. A lot of these towns would be viable if there was decent internet. Missouri Start Quilt Co started in a small town and used the available buildings and infrastructure to jump start their business. Would not have been possible without good internet. https://www.missouriquiltco.com/content/aboutus https://www.missouriquiltco.com/content/aboutus
Aperocky 7y ago
There need to be towns in picturesque locations (Been to western Wyoming, it's basically that non-stop) supported by industry other than agriculture. The ability to remote work should draw a subset of developers and other workers into the area as long as the corresponding infrastructure has been met. Especially for self contracting / employed software engineers.
- dboreham 7y ago
  This happens. Not everywhere because as you say it needs basic infrastructure: e.g a Costco within 1h, jet airport within 2h, 100Mbit connectivity, and some other things like neighbors you'd want to talk to. There are plenty of software developers around here in southwest Montana.
- 7y ago

WalterBright 7y ago

I am an Air Force brat. We didn'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'd buy 2 weeks of groceries at a time.

zelly 7y ago

You don't need 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' gluttony, then I hope more grocery stores go out of business.

rdtwo 7y ago

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

peterwwillis 7y ago

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. 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'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.

dbcurtis 7y ago
I suggest you do the math. My mother was a fanatical gardener and food preserver, so I know full well how much land it takes to grow enough produce to feed a family for a year from a season's frozen/canned produce. I personally did a lot of literal spade work (and harvest work) to make it happen. A couple of window boxes will about cover 1/4 of your need for herbs(1). I am not sure how big mom's gardens (plural) were, but I would guess an acre or so all together. Really, it isn't hard to do the math. There are a zillion books on gardening that address space planning starting from your desired yield estimate. It isn't difficult math -- my mom taught it to a herd of 4-H kids over the years, and as the 4-H garden judge at the county fair expected your notebook to include the computations. So, I encourage you to grow a Victory Garden. Tell us how that works out for you. I guarantee that at least some of the food that you grow will be astoundingly good. Not everyone finds the process satisfying, though. The ironic thing is that the farm country we are talking about in this thread is exactly where mom's gardens were, and gardens were common in the day. But not any more -- people would rather work at Walmart, and buy their canned corn there, than grow it and can it themselves. The rural economy has changed -- at least the farm country economy -- because it is rare to be able to make a living full-time farming any more. (1) Never trust a sentence with the word "just" in it.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  The "math" can be quite complex, because estimates range anywhere from 1/4 acre to feed a family of four to 1 acre to feed 1 person. It depends on how intensely the land is managed, climate zone, caloric requirements, etc. I pack my veggies in much closer rows than you're supposed to, but they do fine. It's funny, I built one 12"x48" window box just for herbs and I barely use them! I have oregano, thyme, thai basil, mint, lavender, bee balm, parsely, cilantro, even green onions, and I kind of forget they're there. A shaker of dried herbs provence works for me most of the time.

protomyth 7y ago

I get the feeling that half the "problem" 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 "local" can often mean 45-90 miles. Heck, go to Sam'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. The interesting part is that the old truth seems to still work, if you have a good butcher, you can survive fairly well.

beauzero 7y ago
This is true. We drive 30 minutes to a butcher in Roanoke, AL and it is seriously packed on a Saturday. Reasonable good meat and local flash frozen southern vegetables.

code_duck 7y ago

" About 5 million people in rural areas have to travel 10 miles or more to buy groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture" is that supposed to sound like a lot? It'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.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Agreed. It can take that long living in town, to drive a mile to the grocery store. I drive 12 miles to the edge of town, rarely seeing another car until I'm almost there, to a grocery on the edge of town. Takes 15 minutes
adrianN 7y ago
It's a lot for people who can't drive, like children or the elderly.
- code_duck 7y ago
  I don't see how it would help, then, if it were closer, like 2 miles? What would they do, instead not be able to walk there?
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Two miles is still really far. That grocery density would mean only ten grocers or so in a major city like Berlin. Small towns should be able to achieve much shorter distances . Nevertheless, 2 miles is well within the ability of people to cycle. Elderly people with poor balance can use electric tricycles.
    - code_duck 7y ago
      The topic was not major cities. It's rural areas. It's very unrealistic for them to be expected to be even as dense as one in every two miles, when in many cases there might only be four houses or less in a one mile stretch. It seems unlikely that people who are physically unable to drive would be walking that distance or using electric tricycles. I would think that what is going to be helpful for these people is grocery delivery service. Also, children are not typically expected to be responsible for grocery shopping.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

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 & co know to position themselves on the edge of town, near the major highway. So folks in town must choose to go downtown, or 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.

k_sze 7y ago

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. This is also true in some places like semi-rural parts of Dongguan city, Guangdong province of China.

seisvelas 7y ago
>I’ve lived in rural Tokyo Did you mean to say rural Japan?
- k_sze 7y ago
  No, I really mean rural Tokyo. Tokyo is BIG and not all wards are like Shinjuku/Chuo.