RAFI’s Come to the Table and Challenging Corporate Power programs are hosting Food & Control at Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount on Tuesday July 8 from 6 – 8 p.m. This workshop will tackle how corporate consolidation in the U.S. grocery industry impacts food access, food prices, and food security. Using the Grocery Gap Atlas to map grocery consolidation, we will discuss how corporate dominance manipulates our food systems.
As a primer for this conversation, Come to the Table staff sat down with Challenging Corporate Power Project Manager Melanie Canales for a brief interview.
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CTTT: What is corporate consolidation, and how does it contribute to issues of food security and food access?
MC: Corporate consolidation occurs when a small number of corporations capture the predominant portion of market share in an industry. Corporations then use their outsized market share and advantage in sourcing products to out-compete smaller and regional food retailers that may have served a community well before the corporation arrived.
Over the last twenty years, we have witnessed massive consolidation in food retail across the country, resulting in countless local businesses closing, thousands of jobs lost, and entire communities being left with extremely limited options for food access that do not come close to meeting their needs. The fewer options there are to get groceries, the fewer choices a community has to feed themselves. The less dynamic the market, the fewer options farmers have for where to sell what they grow. Without a diversified food retail landscape that includes small, regional, and big box operations, food security and food access experience negative outcomes.
CTTT: What does The Grocery Gap Atlas reveal about how grocery consolidation intersects with other issues like income inequality, race, and the rural/urban divide?
MC: The Grocery Gap Atlas compiles data over the last two decades to reveal how corporate consolidation has changed the landscape of food retail across the United States according to census data like race, socioeconomic status, and geography. What the data shows is that consolidation has worsened over the last 20 years in rural geographies, and has more negatively impacted communities of color and lower income areas.
In areas where consolidation is higher, food access tends to be worse, and the areas where consolidation is highest in the country are rural areas, neighborhoods with a lower socioeconomic status, and communities that are predominantly Black, Latine, and Native American. Given the correlation between food access and grocery consolidation, we have observed that food access deteriorates for communities of color, areas that net below median income, and in rural areas like the West, Appalachia, and the Mississippi Delta.
CTTT: How can consumers and advocates challenge this corporate dominance in the grocery industry?
MC: Challenging corporate dominance in the grocery industry requires all of us to manifest the freedom of choice we want to see when it comes to feeding ourselves.
Support local businesses that seek to fill the gaps in food access left by big box grocery chains that don’t meet the needs of the communities they serve. Connect with members in your community and share with each other what you would like to see to make nutritious and culturally relevant food accessible to everyone. Get involved in advocacy at local, state, and even federal levels, your voice needs to be heard. Advocate for food assistance programs that don’t give tax breaks to the corporations who need it least, advocate for policy that supports the growth of small food retailers, regulates corporations that do not invest in the communities they serve, and protects competition in food retail. And remember, there’s nothing wrong with shopping according to your needs, the goal is to create more opportunities to have your needs met that don’t rely on any single entity.
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Register now for the Food & Control in-person event to learn more.