A food desert is defined as “a geographic area where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance. I have known the term for a while but always assumed that the existence of these areas was a symptom of capitalism. It was probably just not economically viable for grocery stores to exist in economically depressed areas. An article from The Atlantic this week suggests that this explanation may not be entirely true.
Prior to the early 1990s, small towns and poor neighborhoods had ample grocery stores, and this was never a problem. So what happened around that time that created this decades-long public health crisis? It turns out that back in the 1930s the US government had passed a piece of legislation known as the Robinson-Patman Act which “essentially banned price discrimination, making it illegal for suppliers to offer preferential deals and for retailers to demand them.”
This rule allowed smaller grocery stores to compete with national chains. Then in the 1980s during the Reagan administration, they essentially stopped enforcing it … which meant smaller suppliers got squeezed out of markets.
The solution to this problem, therefore, is a government empowered to actually enforce the Act to make it possible for independent grocery stores in small towns to return. As the author of this article suggests, “hopefully the incoming Trump administration realizes that the rural and working-class voters who propelled him to power are among those most affected by food deserts” … and they start enforcing the Act once more.
