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The Great Grocery Squeeze: federal policy change in '80s created the food desert
How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert
From 1952 to 1964, for example, the agency issued 81 formal complaints to block grocery suppliers from giving large supermarket chains better prices on milk, oatmeal, pasta, cookies, and other items than they offered to smaller grocers. In rural areas, the same dynamic means that Walmart can capture spending across a wide region by locating its supercenters in larger towns, counting on people in smaller places that no longer have grocery stores to drive long distances to shop for food. Alvaro Bedoya, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, has been an outspoken proponent of Robinson-Patman enforcement, and the FTC under Chair Lina Khan is widely expected to file its first such case in the coming months.
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