One Weird Trick for Eliminating Food Deserts

In a piece for The Atlantic, Stacy Mitchell explains the rise of “food deserts” — communities with limited or non-existent access to fresh food options — in the late 1980s as a result of a federal policy change.

“Food deserts are not an inevitable consequence of poverty or low population density, and they didn’t materialize around the country for no reason,” Mitchell writes. They occurred because the Reagan administration stopped enforcing the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, allowing large grocery retailers to strong-arm suppliers and centralize their national purchasing power, pricing small retailers out of the market.

This led to a “massive die-off” of independent stores, Mitchell explains, and not just in the grocery sector: “From 1982 to 2017, the market share of independent retailers shrank from 53 percent to 22 percent.”

For Mitchell, “If you were to plot the end of Robinson-Patman enforcement and the subsequent restructuring of the retail industry on a timeline, it would closely parallel the emergence and spread of food deserts.” Small stores couldn’t keep up with product prices, and their customers couldn’t afford to pay more. “But once the independent stores closed, the chains no longer had to invest in low-income areas. They could count on people to schlep across town to their other locations.” 

Mitchell asserts that enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act again is the key to eliminating food deserts and ensuring that all Americans have convenient access to fresh foods in their communities.