America's vanishing rural grocery stores

Sunday, February 6, 2011

According to Reuters News Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently gave the town of Cody, Neb., two US$90,000 grants to buy land, set up and run a grocery store.

Cody is on the border with South Dakota. The old store closed 10 years ago. It's a 40-mile drive to Valentine to buy groceries and 170 miles, north or south, to the nearest sizeable city.

Reuters says Kansas State University estimates that 38 per cent of grocery stores in Kansas towns of less than 2,500 people went out of business between 2006 and 2009. The vanishing small town store may be a factor in increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in rural America, experts say. There are 803 counties in the United States, mostly in the Midwest, where half or more of the population lives at least 10 miles from a full service grocery store.

The study cites the Wal-Mart factor, along with operating costs and utilities, unavailable or costly labour, taxes and regulations and, last but not least, lack of community support and low sales, as factors in the decline.

A recently released study called "Rural Grocery Stores: Importance and Challenges," from the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb., (pop. 963), says that in 2000 the average population needed to maintain a grocery store was 2,843. By 2005, the necessary population was 3,252.

Food wholesalers told owners of the old Cody grocery store they needed a minimum of a $5,000 order to make a delivery there worthwhile. Cody's population is 149. BF