
Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there - kilovoltaire
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/us/rural-farm-market.html
======
nmcfarl
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.

~~~
nexuist
> 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.

What you are describing is a de facto food desert:
[https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/index.html)

There might be an easy (albeit costly) way to fix this. Just today I learned
about a govt agency called the Essential Air Service:

> The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) subsidizes airlines
> to serve communities across the country that otherwise would not receive
> scheduled air service.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service)

Because seats are paid for in advance, airlines don't have to worry about
route popularity, and that allows them to financially justify serving towns
that otherwise would never be considered by any airline.

I wonder if taking the same model and applying it to food a la the Essential
Food Service might make sense. If federal or state governments subsidized
every grocery store purchase so the owners can afford to keep the lights on,
we can stop or even reverse the grocery store death toll and enable shorter
commutes for rural residents.

~~~
bgorman
Why should we be subsidizing rural communities with free services that are
terrible for the environment? If people want the benefits of modern
civilization like air travel and grocery stores, they should move to cities.
We are doing enough harm to the world in cities, we don't need to encourage
sprawl even more.

~~~
core-questions
Have you ever, like, left the city, man? Do you really think everyone can just
live in the city without anyone out in the rural areas, you know, growing your
fucking food?

~~~
Retric
Everyone hates government spending, until they want another handout.

We already massively subsidize rural living costs, stop that and the free
market would raise wages to compensate without the need for government
intervention.

Subsidized, farms, roads, healthcare, telecoms, deliveries, airports, etc etc
it’s just wasteful.

~~~
paranoidrobot
If you think the free market would serve markets better, then why are there
food deserts?

The truth is that the free market optimises for maximised ROI to the exclusion
of all else.

There used to be a lot of smaller retailers serving communities - smaller
markets, corner stores, delis, etc. Large retailers came in and set up super
stores which offered comparable goods at lower prices (due to the larger
purchasing power and ability to take a local loss subsidised by other areas).

Once the local retailers were run out of business - the business eventually
looked at what stores wern't turning enough profit and shut them down. After
all, there's no local competition - customers will be required to go further.

This lead to lots of local unemployment and communities in which it's
impossible to get food and other necessities locally.

In a free market, wages only rise where the business doesn't have control over
the market. Once they do (through consolidation and driving out competitors) -
wages drop, positions disappear, and conditions degrade.

~~~
Retric
Food deserts in urban areas are a direct result of people’s spending habits.
There is plenty of people, but stores don’t stock products people don’t buy.
Further if they did it would just go to waste.

If you want root causes, I would propose it’s a combination of subsidies on
other foods combined with the reduced taste of modern fruits and vegetables.

------
Spooky23
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)

~~~
eranima
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.

~~~
megablast
Did that just move the same problems somewhere else?

~~~
eranima
Kinda. The breadbasket became the Great Plains, which resulted in the
destruction of that habitat. The question is, is it worse to replace forest
with farmland or plains with farmland?

------
refurb
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_.

~~~
fzeroracer
What real choice did consumers have?

Walmart came in and drastically slashed prices on groceries because they had
the size, money and infrastructure to cheaply move goods around. This was
intentional behavior to kill local grocery stores and it worked, because
consumers in these areas tend to be poorer and will shop at places that save
them the most money. This is intentional behavior abused by Walmart to
intentionally push out competition.

Local grocery stores can't compete because they literally cannot drop prices
without going bankrupt. So they end up dying, leaving Walmart as the de-facto
local Monopoly.

And then when Walmart decided to pack its bags, the town is devastated because
they relied on it for everything [1]. At the very least educate yourself a bit
on the way Walmart operates.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-
happene...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happened-
when-walmart-left)

~~~
kkarakk
How do these towns even exist if there are no jobs? One guy talks about a
collection of 100+ guns(from my understanding guns are worth quite a chunk of
money if well maintained)

This story makes no sense to me, just sounds like a town where people don't
want to leave and have no incentive to stay.

The only sane person is the one who started sustenance farming - that's the
way to go if you want to live in the middle of nowhere.

~~~
shantly
Anyone living actually _out in the country_ has already been driving 30-60min
each way a couple times a month for "major shopping" including groceries, and
maybe gardening or raising some livestock to supplement that if they're so
inclined. The folks in these marginal towns are just getting introduced to
that way of life, I guess, and that's the story here? If they don't like it...
well, sorry, but it costs a lot more to get groceries at small volumes out to
little, remote towns, so unless your town grows a bunch (unlikely) people are
gonna keep driving farther away for better prices, killing new stores that try
to start up, just as TFA describes. Start living like a real Country Person or
move to where the grocery stores (that everyone actually wants to shop at,
apparently) are.

~~~
pasttense01
Exactly. Small town grocery stores have significantly higher prices and lower
selection than in bigger places. So it turns out that the people with cars
only use the local grocery store for perishables/emergency shopping trips and
do their grocery stock-up trips in bigger places.

------
Animats
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_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States)

~~~
Aperocky
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.

~~~
prawn
Maybe someone should create a bit of a tech-oriented template for helping it
happen - core element checklist and then ways to invite/entice the rest. Start
with decent internet, get some keystone employers, operate out of a co-working
space that also brings a cafe/bar to the area. Let the residents of a
community vote for what they'd like to see added to the mix of businesses.

Then let entrepreneurs scour town lists for the need that interests them. "I
want to paint houses. These two towns in my state need a painter." Or "I moved
to this town with my partner; the community is begging for a small garden
store - I can do that."

------
GlenTheMachine
"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
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.

~~~
driverdan
Your description makes it sound like Walmart is better in every way.

~~~
mschuster91
Walmart is better for the _consumers_ \- more variety in stock, affordable
pricing, one place to shop instead of half a dozen - but bad for everyone
else: the workers, the suppliers, the local communities around a Walmart that
lose their small stores as people will rather drive 20km and have everything
than go to the local store and spend more money on the goods than the gas
costs for the 20km, the taxpayer...

------
gerbilly
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
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
This way of thinking would make sense if the only thing that mattered in life
was money.

------
AgloeDreams
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
It would seem the issue is with low incomes rather than with Dollar General.

~~~
AgloeDreams
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.

~~~
kd0amg
_communities that formerly bought locally produced goods_

How long has it been since these communities actually did that? Small towns
can't really support the diversity of industry it takes to buy more local
goods than shipped-in goods in a modern-day lifestyle.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Sorry, by locally produced, I'm referring to (mostly) foodstuffs,
additionally, local small retailers that were resellers.

~~~
msla
> Sorry, by locally produced, I'm referring to (mostly) foodstuffs,
> additionally, local small retailers that were resellers.

A town in the Great Plains doesn't have a climate fit to make most foods
locally, unless you call taking shipped-in ingredients and cooking them
"making" food.

~~~
PeterisP
It certainly can (and did) make most food locally, it's just that it has to be
different food - you eat what you can make from locally produced ingredient
and don't eat what you can't. The type of food we eat has changed a lot, and
the expectation to have "ethnic" food with products grown on another
continent, or to have the same vegetables available year-round instead of them
being seasonal - that's a relatively recent thing.

~~~
msla
> It certainly can (and did) make most food locally, it's just that it has to
> be different food - you eat what you can make from locally produced
> ingredient and don't eat what you can't.

No. Not in eastern Montana. There are regions where you _can 't_ live off the
land year-round like you think.

------
chabes
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.

~~~
OrangeMango
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.

------
raintrees
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.

~~~
prawn
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.

~~~
raintrees
I agree. And I would also go further to suggest this set of priorities are
part of what goes into my consideration of "quality of life."

I have worked very hard to get myself to the point where I have the luxury of
choosing to allocate my time and money this way. Definitely not all of my
efforts have been successful, but as I continue to apply myself to my
perceived values, I find success far more often than failure.

And those successes for my efforts give me great satisfaction.

I frequently find at the base of this the example of the children presented
with the "marshmallow" test - The ability to delay gratification.

Or as others have summarized: Work hard, then easy, rather than easy, then
hard: By working hard in the beginning, later the work/living is easier. The
alternate makes for a dim prospect for my future, so I make my choices
appropriately.

------
maxerickson
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.

~~~
Bartweiss
The car dependency of rural America is certainly worth discussing, and this
specific grocery store case does have consequences. As one example, in towns
like this retirement homes or apartments catering to older people are often
within walking or shuttle distance of a town center with a grocery store,
which helps preserve independence for people who no longer drive. But the
focus of the article is strange, and seems to come from a rather urban
mindset. Lines like "nowhere to buy even a banana" don't square with "the only
grocer within 15 miles shut down last year" or "5 million people in rural
areas have to travel 10 miles or more to buy groceries". A ten mile drive is
not short, but it's not actually unusual for _many_ services in the
(mid-)western US. (Which is probably why the people interviewed don't share
the reporter's focus on distance.) People living on actual farms may well have
been ten miles from the grocery store too!

The most telling line in the piece is: _" In town after town, people said
their greatest challenge was enticing their neighbors away from dollar stores
or the Walmart four towns over."_ Meaning, one, that people are already
driving for groceries. And two, that finding out there's a grocery store in
down didn't persuade them to switch. I looked up Mountanair to see where
people _were_ shopping, since 45 miles to a grocer is unusually long. (It's
Family Dollar or a 45-mile drive to Belen.) In the process, I ran into this
review for B Street Market, the new local grocer discussed in the story: _"
It's the only grocery store in town... Nice people that work there but[...]
prices so high that you don't even want to go in there.... It's worth the
drive to Belen[...] to go get groceries plus a lot better selection."_ Ending
Mountainair's story with the happy news that it once again has a grocery store
was only half the picture.

I think that poor choice of focus causes the story to neglect any truly
interesting analysis. The obvious place to start is not "ten miles to a
grocery store" but "the last grocery store went out of business", which leads
to a larger discussion of rural America's economic prospects, the price
disadvantages faced by non-chain businesses, and the vicious cycle of box
stores taking money out of communities and so creating more dependence on low
prices. Or else keep pursuing the briefly mentioned topic of where people
_are_ shopping - there's a fascinating comparison to urban food deserts, which
enforce a similar choice between distant grocers and unhealthy processed foods
nearby.

Fundamentally, this feels like pretending that one example of a much larger
pattern is special, rather than just a human-interest way of approaching the
topic.

~~~
bluGill
The reporter made the mistake of not measuring distance in a unit of time! 10
miles in rural areas is just more than 10 minutes if you obey the speed limit
- nobody actually does that though, so in reality it probably is less than 10
minutes.

The same distance in NYC could be well over an hour (Note that I don't live in
NYC so I have to guess). Depending of course on where you are going and how
you get there, but most traffic is running much slower than rural areas. If
you drive there is the time to find a parking spot and get to your destination
- time that rural areas with plenty of parking don't bother count. If you take
transit there may be a few transfers and the time to wait for your bus/train
at each one. In NYC you may think about walking to the grocery store: 10 miles
is hours each way.

Car dependency isn't worth discussing because there is no other option. When
you are by definition in the middle of nowhere there isn't any other option.
Rural areas exist for farms: there is no way to move them in.

~~~
Bartweiss
It's particularly surprising since the story references "rural food deserts"
and cites the USDA "number living 10 miles from a grocer" statistic, but
doesn't put 2 and 2 together. The USDA publishes that stat because of its food
desert definition: _" more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or
suburban areas, and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas"_.

Now, the USDA definition sound weirdly broad to me. I apparently grew up in a
suburban 'food desert' which encompassed most of the town, including several
extremely rich subdivisions. Since it was a suburb with practically no traffic
or stoplights, that means "desert" applies to a ~15 minute walk or ~3 minute
drive to the store. And in a town with brutal winters and minimal public
transit, even the sub-poverty-line families outside that 1 mile radius
completely relied on cars. So looking into this has made me more skeptical of
"23.5M Americans live in food deserts".

(Ironically, people did what this story promotes: bought short-lifespan foods
at the close store, and expensive or bulk goods >10 miles away. The USDA just
needed to apply its rural definition to that suburb.)

But the USDA at least has the right idea: access is defined by time and
effort, not distance. Time is fairly obvious; walking, public transit, and
driving in traffic are all slower. More subtly, my experience living 20+
minutes from groceries in a rural and an urban setting is that it was _much_
more pleasant with a car than on foot. With a car, you can freely get heavy or
bulky stuff, stock up for longer, go after dark when you're tired, or shop in
summer and winter without spoiled groceries or frostbite.

There's no way to write this story effectively without understanding that 10
miles can be 10 minutes, or that for farms outside these small towns
_everything_ is 10+ miles away. Hence the people in New Mexico saying that a
grocer right in town is still less good than driving 45 miles to a better
store: you're already planning major trips to get goods regardless.

------
protomyth
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
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
" 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.

~~~
adrianN
It's a lot for people who can't drive, like children or the elderly.

~~~
code_duck
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
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
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.

------
smileysteve
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.

------
rdtwo
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

------
JoeAltmaier
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.

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fnordfnordfnord
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
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.

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WalterBright
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.

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peterwwillis
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
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
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.

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k_sze
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
>I’ve lived in rural Tokyo

Did you mean to say rural Japan?

~~~
k_sze
No, I really mean rural Tokyo. Tokyo is _BIG_ and not all wards are like
Shinjuku/Chuo.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/SOD24](http://archive.is/SOD24)

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wil421
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.”

~~~
pnutjam
There is a lot of blame for Walmart, but let's not forget the car culture that
has everyone leaving their town every day and commuting instead of living and
working in a community.

~~~
notatoad
Yeah, this isn't really a relevant critique in farm country. You can live in a
town and walk to the grocery store, but then you need to drive to work. Or
else you can live on a farm and drive to a town to buy groceries. But in no
scenario does farming and density work together. Industrial-scale farming
doesn't happen without car travel. Subsistence farming does, but if all the
farmers are subsistence farmers then the cities don't get fed.

If you want to be a proponent of dense urban living, that's great. Dense urban
living is good. But dense urban living is only feasible because farm country
exists.

~~~
pnutjam
I'm not critiquing dense urban or rural living. However, when 70% of the
people who live rural pass a couple grocery stores on their way home, the ones
who don't commute are going to suffer.

Roads should be designed to travel between communities, not bypass
communities.

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zelly
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.

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aSplash0fDerp
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
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.

