Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there • Hacker News Board

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#81

Post by CharlesColeman » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #3

Walmart and the like killed local competition. There’s a gas station I stop at from time to time in the country with a Walmart next door. It’s insanely busy. I have family in the country and they accept having to drive to get decent groceries. There are seasonal vegetable and fruit stands but you couldn’t get everything you need. A local ranch sells beef but it would be quite expensive to buy year around unless you w…

> To be honest I don’t feel bad for some of these people in the article. They are opposed to the word co-op.

You don't feel bad because of their word choice? That reflects poorly on someone, and it's not them.

They're solving their local problems by starting co-ops, who cares if they use your preferred branding for it or not?

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#82

Post by kkarakk » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

shantly wrote: post #67

hindsightbias wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous rural delivery growth will be huge(!) as the population ages out. Perhaps there can be a federal subsidy for that.

Better to subsidize moving these folks to rural "cities" where the stores are if you're going to be spending the money, right? Unless you're also discouraging more people from moving out into the sticks unless they can afford/are OK with the costs (actual, unsubsidized costs—so, more than it costs now) & challenges of living there, so the delivery subsidy program naturally tapers off over time. Otherwise you're commi…

People will NEVER support a government that asks them to move. That's the whole reason these towns exist.

Look at China - they literally forcibly relocate people at economic gunpoint(their jobs will be moved and their homes will no longer exist by this date, their choice of what to do) and somethings actual gunpoint.

That comes with a whole slew of societal issues. The elderly simple cannot adjust to different lifestyles, they freak out.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#83

Post by rriepe » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #34

rriepe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite this consistently happening , I doubt you can name a single Republican politician who has run and been elected on this platform.

> I doubt you can name a single Republican politician who has run and been elected on this platform. A whole lot of Republican politicians since around 2000 (including George W. Bush) have run for and been elected to federal office on an overt platform of dismantling both the revenue and benefit payment sides of Social Security. Sure, the soundbite has been “saving social security”, but the concrete policy of dismant…

So, can you name a single Republican politician or not? I'm still waiting for a name and a winning campaign from this century.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#84

Post by nmcfarl » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

Grocery Stores closing really is happening, and really is a problem. And it's part of what's killing towns - if only because attracting new folk without one is hard.

We live in John Day, Or (pop 1700)(County pop 7200, area: about 2x Delaware), which we chose partially because of it's supermarket. The next closest supermarket is 90min away. (Walmart: 2h). Not having to commute hours for groceries is a big deal, as is being able to get vegetables of season - and in the rural west these things not a given.

When looking to relocate from Seattle to rural town in the west with hospital (wife's a doc) and broadband (for me), it soon became obvious that the quality of the food available was going to be the next most important thing on the list (and much harder than broadband). Too many places we looked had long commutes to groceries - or stores with almost no fresh food‡. Most places have no farmers markets or farm stands outside of summer, and early fall. And for us at least - living off of canned and frozen food just isn't fun (at least if we've not canned/frozen it.)

This really restricts immigration which is critical economically when your town's youth mainly move to the city as is really common. These small towns are dying a death of a thousand cuts, but loosing your grocery store is a pretty big cut.

‡ My favorite story here is once when living in a small town with 2! stores for a short while, we decided to have a dish that called for cooking some spinach. Neither had fresh spinach, nor any substitute - kale say. Neither had any frozen spinach, the second store did have canned "creamed spinach" - and an ingredients list that included both condensed milk and corn syrup. We made something else.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#85

Post by fzeroracer » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #74

fzeroracer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What real choice did consumers have? Walmart came in and drastically slashed prices on groceries because they had the size, money and infrastructure to cheaply move goods around. This was intentional behavior to kill local grocery stores and it worked, because consumers in these areas tend to be poorer and will shop at places that save them the most money. This is intentional behavior abused by Walmart to intentional…

Those evil corporations offering consumers lower prices and better selection!! They need to stop hurting consumers!!

Is that really the only response you have to large corporations artificially lowering prices to brute force local markets?

What next, are you going to defend regional monopolies by ISPs because consumers should just choose a different ISP?

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#86

Post by CharlesColeman » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #9

mieseratte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not OP. It's more like they're willfully choosing to suffer. So in that case, enjoy your misery!

> Not OP. It's more like they're willfully choosing to suffer. So in that case, enjoy your misery!

They're not "willfully choosing to suffer." They're actually starting co-ops but choosing not to call them by that word. The OP just decided to be needlessly judgemental over that, and lead us down into this stupid, prejudiced subthread.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#87

Post by bluGill » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #31

maxerickson wrote: post #2

So the town in the article is going to be nearly completely unlivable without a vehicle and is about 20 miles from a Walmart. There will be few decent jobs that are walkable, limited medical care, etc, in a town of 1,500, it is just the way it is. Which isn't to say that these folks can't lament reduced access to food, but the literal availability of food is low there only if you ignore that other circumstances alrea…

The car dependency of rural America is certainly worth discussing, and this specific grocery store case does have consequences. As one example, in towns like this retirement homes or apartments catering to older people are often within walking or shuttle distance of a town center with a grocery store, which helps preserve independence for people who no longer drive. But the focus of the article is strange, and seems…

The reporter made the mistake of not measuring distance in a unit of time! 10 miles in rural areas is just more than 10 minutes if you obey the speed limit - nobody actually does that though, so in reality it probably is less than 10 minutes.

The same distance in NYC could be well over an hour (Note that I don't live in NYC so I have to guess). Depending of course on where you are going and how you get there, but most traffic is running much slower than rural areas. If you drive there is the time to find a parking spot and get to your destination - time that rural areas with plenty of parking don't bother count. If you take transit there may be a few transfers and the time to wait for your bus/train at each one. In NYC you may think about walking to the grocery store: 10 miles is hours each way.

Car dependency isn't worth discussing because there is no other option. When you are by definition in the middle of nowhere there isn't any other option. Rural areas exist for farms: there is no way to move them in.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#88

Post by rriepe » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #52

rriepe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite this consistently happening , I doubt you can name a single Republican politician who has run and been elected on this platform.

Rick Perry in 2017: https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2011/08/29/rick-perry-s... -- comparing Social Security to a Ponzi scheme Newt Gingrich in 2011: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/21/gingrich-unv... -- replace Social Security with private accounts.

Perry was appointed. Gingrich hasn't served in office in 20 years. He even had a campaign since then without a peep of this.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#89

Post by fzeroracer » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

kkarakk wrote: post #73

fzeroracer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What real choice did consumers have? Walmart came in and drastically slashed prices on groceries because they had the size, money and infrastructure to cheaply move goods around. This was intentional behavior to kill local grocery stores and it worked, because consumers in these areas tend to be poorer and will shop at places that save them the most money. This is intentional behavior abused by Walmart to intentional…

How do these towns even exist if there are no jobs? One guy talks about a collection of 100+ guns(from my understanding guns are worth quite a chunk of money if well maintained) This story makes no sense to me, just sounds like a town where people don't want to leave and have no incentive to stay. The only sane person is the one who started sustenance farming - that's the way to go if you want to live in the middle o…

These towns exist because they used to have jobs. Then those jobs dried up due to manufacturing leaving, companies dying and so forth.

These people can't up and leave because their homes are worth very little and they don't have the money or skills to pivot to anything new. So what else is there for them to do but nothing?

That's the reality of many small towns in America.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#90

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #70

"Walmart and the like killed local competition." I disagree (kind of). I grew up in the most rural part of Virginia. There was no competition. We had a local grocery store, for sure; but it sucked. No ethnic food, not even soy sauce. No seafood. No link sausage, three kinds of salad dressing. Maybe four or five green vegetables. It was like a grocery store in some third-world countries I have visited. And there was l…

The mom-and-pop stores cannot reasonably compete with Walmart or any other chain store. Their suppliers charge more because they lack the volume for the discounts the big stores charge, they lack the skills/manpower/IT to purchase, stock and maintain the thousands of products in a big store, and last but not least mom-and-pop stores don't get the massive tax breaks and other incentives/bribes that the state provides for huge stores.