Yes, we can't shop our way out of this mess that is our food system. But we do need to look at the retail aspects of the system: at how and where food is sold to us and who benefits.
More than thirty years ago when I moved to Reno, I first lived in a low income area in the northeast part of town. Having neglected to learn to drive (and hurrying to catch up!), I was happy that there were both a supermarket and a mom and pop market within walking distance. Soon, though, the supermarket closed, as more housing was built on the outskirts of town and markets moved there.
In 1990 when I moved to the Los Angeles area I was happy to find a nice apartment on a tree lined street in a walking neighborhood. Almost anything I could want or need in daily life was within a mile walk - bank, library, shops. But when I made my first three block trip to the supermarket, I saw that it was preparing to close its doors. Eventually it became an Office Depot, and when I moved my office into my home that was a boon. But retail food in my neighborhood consisted of two corner markets serving primarily the Armenian community. You can't knock feta, lavash, and hummus either, but there was little variety in the other foods, and fairly limp produce. Finally, in the last year or two of the nineties, we had a mid-week certified farmer's market a little less than a mile's walk away.
Now I live in a neighborhood that never had a center. It's suburban in flavor, but pretty densely populated with condominiums, mobile home parks, apartments. There was a supermarket (the local expression of Kroger, unfortunately) within nine-tenths of a mile, but it closed. There's another, one of the big discount variety, within a mile and a quarter. They have very little that's local. Then 1.6 miles away, there is a farm stand. The Imwalle family is in their fourth generation of growing and selling produce and garden starts. It's not all local, though much of it comes from fairly near, and it's not all organic, but they tell you what's theirs and what else is local, and you can ask about anything, "Where did this come from?" and get a straight answer.
Then about 2 1/2 miles away in different directions are a regional chain supermarket, which is pretty good also about identifying sources on fresh produce, and a local huge supermarket, with better prices than information, but with a full range of local dairy and eggs.
Now this is all fine for me. I have an economical car to get me where I need to go quickly, I organize trips, and once in a great while I will walk (and may find myself doing it more often if a local high end market really does come in where Krogerland used to be). But I have been wondering for some months - how does a person in my neighborhood who is transportation indigent obtain fresh and mostly local food? Is it possible? How much would it cost as compared with doing a week's shopping at the big bargain market? And how much time would it take each week to do so, again compared to one shopping run? I keep threatening to try this for one week. One thing I've already figured out - being a vegetarian makes it easier. The only local sustainably grown meat - turkey, sold at a shop not really near anything else - would require a trip on an infrequently running county bus.
Why am I going on about this? Because the access to fresh local food is a particular challenge to those who live in poor neighborhoods in cities all over this country. The movement to put California certified farmer's markets into the poorer neighborhoods has failed, I think, here in Sonoma County. Even if one were near my neighborhood, prices here are two or more times what one pays at a supermarket or at Imwalle's - whereas it was the exceptional market in southern California (Santa Monica, for example) which catered to high end produce shoppers.
I've posted a link to a new policy briefing today, "Facing Goliath" by Katy Mamen for the Oakland Institute. Katy takes on the systematic issues of supermarket consolidation and food security. There are even more reasons in her report to shun Walmart, if you didn't have enough already.
And I have been pondering this reality: when communities offer incentives for new box stores to move in - usually near more affluent neighborhoods which require a car - the community appears to win as sales tax revenues are increased. But the community loses over time, as local businesses decline, and then churn much less money back into the local community. And the poor lose in two additional ways, as they pay proportionally more sales tax, and their access to local wholesome food declines.
We need concerted community action, far beyond individual shopping decisions, if we are to address the unjust and unhealthy things that are happening to our food supply. Check out Katy's report.
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