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Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

nytimes.com

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

#331

Post by eranima »

megablast wrote: post #266
eranima wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from upstate NY, and the loss of "breadbasket" status was great for the local ecology. When we were the breadbasket of the country (when the country was much younger), all the forests were cut down and erosion and water quality were a much bigger issue.

Did that just move the same problems somewhere else?

Kinda. The breadbasket became the Great Plains, which resulted in the destruction of that habitat. The question is, is it worse to replace forest with farmland or plains with farmland?

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

#332

Post by Bartweiss »

pasttense01 wrote: post #317
rayiner wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45 miles is like what, a 35 minute drive in a rural area? Costco runs in Westchester NY took about that long when we depended on public transit.

No. That would mean an average speed of 77 miles per hour. And given that you need to slow down in the small towns and before passing that means your normal speed would be more than 85 mph. Around here the rural speed limit is 55 mph so people drive about 60 mph.

It does depend a bit on where the rural area is - in the Dakotas and other western states the highway limit is 80 mph, without much in the way of interstitial towns. Even so, you're not starting or ending on an interstate, so averaging higher than 65 or so is largely out of the question.

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

#333

Post by code_duck »

adrianN wrote: post #307
code_duck wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it would help, then, if it were closer, like 2 miles? What would they do, instead not be able to walk there?

Two miles is still really far. That grocery density would mean only ten grocers or so in a major city like Berlin. Small towns should be able to achieve much shorter distances . Nevertheless, 2 miles is well within the ability of people to cycle. Elderly people with poor balance can use electric tricycles.

The topic was not major cities. It's rural areas. It's very unrealistic for them to be expected to be even as dense as one in every two miles, when in many cases there might only be four houses or less in a one mile stretch.

It seems unlikely that people who are physically unable to drive would be walking that distance or using electric tricycles. I would think that what is going to be helpful for these people is grocery delivery service.

Also, children are not typically expected to be responsible for grocery shopping.

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

#334

Post by Bartweiss »

adrianN wrote: post #285
Bartweiss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. The article somehow skips from "the grocery store closed" to "we need to open a new one" with almost no attention to what would be different the second time around. (If I may be cynical, the extensive focus on co-ops and community markets makes me think the reporter assumed the old grocery stores just weren't sufficiently profitable, and didn't ask whether they were even solvent.) It has one line which…

An effective way of stopping people from driving an hour to save 5% off their grocery bill is making driving more expensive. Raise gas taxes to European levels and people will think twice before burning 10$ worth of gas to save 10$ on food.

If we're talking about Walmart vs a non-chain supermarket, 5% is going to be about the best possible case. Things like bulk goods or cheap cuts of meat can pretty easily be 30% cheaper. Even looking at a pickup truck and the higher European prices, I don't think a 30 mile drive would rise by more than ~$6? That might still persuade people to make fewer trips and buy more food at a time, though. Which doesn't save local grocery stores, is still a pretty good outcome - cheap grocery bills with less gas burned, and decisions that are closer to reflecting the overall cost of driving.

There's a reason people who live "10 miles from anything" absolutely hate rising gas prices, though. If you commute 20 miles a day for $25k/year, an extra $3/gallon would eat about a week's pay just getting to and from work.

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

#335

Post by raintrees »

prawn wrote: post #311
raintrees wrote: post #53

We are very fortunate. We live in a very rural, conservative, very northern coastal town of California (next door to Oregon). Our typical shopping day has us first visiting a local farm to purchase Eggs, Cream, Beef, and Pork products all organic and locally grown (Alexandre Family Farms). Our next stop is the farm stand for our local organic farm to get in-season fresh vegetables picked very recently (Ocean Air Farm…

This is time, effort and money people tend to find difficult to allocate. Do they spend their day off across four locations going shopping and neglect their yard or catching up with friends? It's possible to do it all, but easier to convince yourself you can't because you're tired, saving money, stressed from work/kids/etc.

I agree. And I would also go further to suggest this set of priorities are part of what goes into my consideration of "quality of life."

I have worked very hard to get myself to the point where I have the luxury of choosing to allocate my time and money this way. Definitely not all of my efforts have been successful, but as I continue to apply myself to my perceived values, I find success far more often than failure.

And those successes for my efforts give me great satisfaction.

I frequently find at the base of this the example of the children presented with the "marshmallow" test - The ability to delay gratification.

Or as others have summarized: Work hard, then easy, rather than easy, then hard: By working hard in the beginning, later the work/living is easier. The alternate makes for a dim prospect for my future, so I make my choices appropriately.

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

#336

Post by jschwartzi »

refurb wrote: post #187
jschwartzi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the greater good in your mind? What end would you like to see here?

People have the freedom to spend their money on groceries as they choose and businesses have the freedom to sell groceries as they choose.

This is kind of a trite example, but I'm trying to illustrate how a simplistic application of the concept of "freedom" can lead to situations where most people are actually less free in the end.

Take the Walmart pushing small local grocers out of business as a case study. Suppose there's a valley consisting of about 3 or 4 small towns spread out about 10 miles apart in a big chain. The locals for each town each go to the local grocery store to buy food. When a Walmart opens in town 3 of 4, many locals from towns 1, 2, and 4 also start going to town 3 to shop for groceries because they can buy in bulk. But it's a relatively expensive trip for many people in towns 1 and 2. And the lack of custom from the more wealthy citizens in those towns means the local grocery stores go out of business in all the towns in the valley, and Walmart becomes the only game in the entire valley allowing them to set prices however they choose.

Do you think it's a good idea to make poorer people in towns 1, 2, and 4 drive an additional 10 miles out of their way to buy groceries, when many of them couldn't afford to drive to town 3 regularly in the first place? Isn't that a kind of impingement on their freedom to buy groceries as they choose? What kind of lifestyle changes might that cause if buying groceries becomes more of a hardship than it used to be?

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

#337

Post by bluGill »

corebit wrote: post #112
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be confusing small towns for suburban sprawl. Small towns don't have the problems you list: build a massive McMansion on the edge of town you are still walking distance to the other edge of the town. The whole value of your house will be more than a tiny house in San Francisco despite having 10x the floor area and 100x the land. Hiways have been good for rural areas overall, because the few people who liv…

Actually OP is more right than even he knows, because the small towns themselves should never have been built but for massive federal government land subsidies for railroads in the 19th century - huge sections of which were never sustainable even when built, let alone a century later.

Someone in a different forum just pointed out to me that the federal subsidies for railroads were not massive in the 1860s. Today that land is worth a lot and so the subsidies seem massive, but back then the federal government had a lot of land that was essentially worthless - except for a few recluses nobody wanted it because you had to live a solitary life. By giving it to the railroad they were able to build a railroad that meant someone who moved to railroad land could get somewhere (IE back east to visit family for Christmas), and goods. The railroad made out great on this, but land that didn't have a railroad nearby wasn't nearly as valuable because you were stuck living there alone, with no opportunity to buy nice things to make your life better.
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