The Great Grocery Store Squeeze.
Food deserts are not an inevitable consequence of poverty or low population density, and they didn’t materialize around the country for no reason. Something happened. That something was a specific federal policy change in the 1980s.
Easing restrictions on “discriminatory pricing” allowed major supermarket chains to drive local groceries out of business, and forced residents of low-status city neighborhoods and rural towns to travel long distances to buy food.
“The Biden administration has begun to connect the dots.” But Trump’s re-election puts that work in doubt.
By Stacy Mitchell at The Atlantic.
h/t Garbage Day