A food desert is when someone has to drive more than ten miles to reach a grocery store, according to Stacy Mitchell, director of the Institute for Local Self Reliance and author of “The Great Grocery Squeeze,” published in the December issue of the Atlantic. She said the decline of local groceries has only become a phenomenon since the 1980s. Before that, most towns had at least one grocery, sometimes more, which led to healthy competition.
“ Poverty and ruralness have been around for a really long time. But food deserts haven’t. Food deserts didn't used to exist,” Mitchell said. Her article traces the history of the federal Robinson-Patman Act, passed in 1936 to keep large grocery chains, like A&P, from manipulating the cost of food to their benefit, and putting independent stores out of business.
”The Federal Trade Commission found that A&P was gaining market dominance, not for any legitimate means of competition. It was pressuring suppliers,” said Mitchell. “So they would go to the big grocery suppliers and say, ‘You're going to give us a lower price, and you're going to charge the competing grocery store down the street a higher price for these goods.’ And because A& P was their biggest customer, suppliers felt like, ‘Well, we can't say no to A&P.’”
In her research, Mitchell found that for 50 years, the law helped large and small groceries co-exist. But Mitchell said during the Reagan era, the mood shifted and the law got intentionally shelved by Congress – not taken off the books but unenforced. Now small grocers are unable to compete with the likes of Walmart and Dollar General.
“ It's also important to note that Dollar General benefits from the lack of Robinson-Patman enforcement,” Mitchell said. “They are one of the retailers who are able to go to suppliers and say, ‘We want a better price.’ What I hear from independent grocers, they'll say, ‘It is the exact same truck from the supplier who's coming into my town to distribute to me and to distribute to the dollar store across the street. And yet I am paying a much higher price and there's no difference in cost for the supplier at all.’ It's purely about market power.”
She said to fight the spread of food deserts, states like Wyoming should start enforcing it again.
”States have a really crucial role to play in antitrust enforcement and state attorneys general are empowered to enforce the federal antitrust laws. And many states have their own antitrust laws, including laws that deal with the problem of price discrimination. We have seen over the last couple of years, growing energy on the part of state enforcers to address these problems. We're going to see that continue, which I think is really good news in terms of getting to a level playing field.”
She said now is the time because there’s more bipartisan support.
“There has been growing concern on the part of some Republicans that antitrust enforcement has been too lax, and in particular that it's really harming local communities and small businesses,” Mitchell said.
She said President-elect Trump’s pick for the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, has expressed some support for the idea.
To hear the full conversation, tune in to Open Spaces on January 10.
