Why Opening Grocery Stores Alone Doesn’t Solve Food Deserts

Until 40 years ago, the federal government actively tried to help with this: Competition regulators rigorously monitored mergers and enforced the Robinson-Patman Act, a 1930s-era law intended to prevent suppliers from offering better pricing to big retailers than to independent stores. By the 1980s, however, some economists argued that allowing big retailers to expand and negotiate favorable deals would bring lower prices for all. The Robinson-Patman Act, and an underlying desire to protect small businesses, remained popular with the public, so Congress never moved to repeal it, but regulators increasingly stopped enforcing it. This era gave rise to a rash of consolidations and a huge building boom by the likes of Walmart and Kroger. And as the power of retail chains grew, more small businesses folded.

Once again, look to the 80s for the architecture of our misery. Fucking baby boomers.

One of the local rural towns we pass through just had its only grocery store close. There is still a fair amount of existing businesses, and it's really only less than an hour from my city, but it seems like it's going to be very problematic for those people soon. It makes me wonder just how long the other businesses will be able to survive.

I have a feeling that the grocery may have closed for personal/possibly health reasons. I have no basis for this at all, just that the town itself looked to still have clean buildings for businesses (not decrepit/dilapidated like some of the other verging ghost towns) and they were open and clearly had people. That would have me suspect not that the grocery was failing, but that maybe the owner had to close for personal reasons.

This is an unfortunate situation when large scale suppliers dont play ball with smaller stores and when predatory chains like dollar general play the price wars game to drive away better options.

Unfortunately the kinds of people who live in food deserts tend to be the most price conscious and they will take the longer trip if they need to in order to stretch their dollar out more.

As an aside I think the article focusing on Cairo, IL of all places was such an unusual choice and I wonder how much of the problems that they had were unique to their location. Cairo is a town who's population has been declining and whos buildings have been abandoning for the better part of the last hundred years. This is a trend that a lot of rust belt cities share, but Cairo was a small city of under 20,000 that has shrunk to under 1,000. What few people remaining there got a further kick in the rear by the fact that the area has gotten some bad flooding as well.

Cairo is a relatively remote town that is being steadily abandoned, and has a propensity for flooding(which accelerated the slow process). That isnt to say that they arent a food desert, or that the remaining people there who likely cant afford to move dont deserve better, but I feel like they are an example of a town who's got more stacked against them than what we usually think of when we think of food deserts (like a poor neighborhood in a city). Honestly I think its not unrealistic to believe the town as a whole will be abandoned in the coming decade.